One server process can provide multiple "views" of
the DNS namespace,
e.g. an "inside" view to certain
clients, and an "outside" view to others.
- Improved Portability Architecture
BIND version 9 development has been underwritten by the following
Compaq Computer Corporation
Process Software Corporation
U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency
Stichting NLnet - NLnet Foundation
For a summary of functional enhancements in previous
releases, see the HISTORY file.
For a detailed list of user-visible changes from
previous releases, see the CHANGES file.
For up-to-date release notes and errata, see
BIND 9.10.0 includes a number of changes from BIND 9.9 and earlier
releases. New features include:
- DNS Response-rate limiting (DNS RRL) blunts the impact of
reflection and amplification attacks.
- New zone file format "map" is an image of a zone database
that can be loaded directly into memory, allowing much faster
- Substantial improvement in response-policy zone (RPZ)
performance. Up to 32 response-policy zones can be
configured with minimal performance loss.
- ACLs can now be specified based on geographic location
using the MacMind GeoIP databases.
- New XML schema (version 3) for the statistics channel
includes many new statistics and uses a flattened XML tree
- A new stylesheet, based on the Google Charts API, displays
XML statistics in charts and graphs on javascript-enabled
- The statistics channel can now provide data in JSON
- The internal and export versions of the BIND libraries
(libisc, libdns, etc) have been unified so that external
library clients can use the same libraries as BIND itself.
- New 'dnssec-coverage' tool to check DNSSEC key coverage
for a zone and report if a lapse in signing coverage has
been inadvertently scheduled.
- Signing algorithm flexibility and other improvements
for the "rndc" control channel.
- 'named-checkzone' and 'named-compilezone' can now read
journal files, allowing them to process dynamic zones.
- Multiple DLZ databases can now be configured. Individual
zones can be configured to be served from a specific DLZ
database. DLZ databases now serve zones of type "master"
- "rndc zonestatus" reports information about a specified zone.
- "named" now listens on IPv6 as well as IPv4 interfaces
BIND 9.9.0 includes a number of changes from BIND 9.8 and earlier
releases. New features include:
- Inline signing, allowing automatic DNSSEC signing of
master zones without modification of the zonefile, or
"bump in the wire" signing in slaves.
- New 'rndc flushtree' command clears all data under a given
- New 'rndc sync' command dumps pending changes in a dynamic
- New 'rndc signing' command displays or clears signing status
records in 'auto-dnssec' zones.
- NSEC3 parameters for 'auto-dnssec' zones can now be set prior
to signing, eliminating the need to initially sign with NSEC.
- Startup time improvements on large authoritative servers.
- Slave zones are now saved in raw format by default.
- Several improvements to response policy zones (RPZ).
- Improved hardware scalability by using multiple threads
to listen for queries and using finer-grained client locking
- The 'also-notify' option now takes the same syntax as
'masters', so it can used named masterlists and TSIG keys.
- 'dnssec-signzone -D' writes an output file containing only DNSSEC
data, which can be included by the primary zone file.
- 'dnssec-signzone -R' forces removal of signatures that are
not expired but were created by a key which no longer exists.
- 'dnssec-signzone -X' allows a separate expiration date to
be specified for DNSKEY signatures from other signatures.
- New '-L' option to dnssec-keygen, dnssec-settime, and
dnssec-keyfromlabel sets the default TTL for the key.
- dnssec-dsfromkey now supports reading from standard input,
to make it easier to convert DNSKEY to DS.
- RFC 1918 reverse zones have been added to the empty-zones
- Dynamic updates can now optionally set the zone's SOA serial
number to the current UNIX time.
- DLZ modules can now retrieve the source IP address of
- 'request-ixfr' option can now be set at the per-zone level.
- 'dig +rrcomments' turns on comments about DNSKEY records,
indicating their key ID, algorithm and function
- Simplified nsupdate syntax and added readline support
BIND 9 currently requires a UNIX system with an ANSI C compiler,
basic POSIX support, and a 64 bit integer type.
We've had successful builds and tests on the following systems:
NetBSD
3.x, 4.0-beta, 5.0-beta
Solaris 8, 9, 9 (x86), 10
NOTE: As of BIND 9.5.1, 9.4.3, and 9.3.6, older versions of
Windows, including Windows NT and Windows 2000, are no longer
We have recent reports from the user community that a supported
version of BIND will build and run on the following systems:
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, 5, 6
Do not use a parallel "make".
Several environment variables that can be set before running
configure will affect compilation:
The C compiler to use. configure tries to figure
out the right one for supported systems.
C compiler flags. Defaults to include -g
and/or -O2
as supported by the compiler. Please include '-g'
if you need to set CFLAGS.
System header file directories. Can be used to specify
where add-on thread or IPv6 support is, for example.
Defaults to empty string.
Any additional preprocessor symbols you want defined.
Defaults to empty string.
-DISC_FACILITY=LOG_LOCAL0
Enable DNSSEC signature chasing support in dig.
-DDIG_SIGCHASE=1 (sets -DDIG_SIGCHASE_TD=1 and
Disable dropping queries from particular well known ports.
Sibling glue checking in named-checkzone is enabled by default.
To disable the default check set. -DCHECK_SIBLING=0
named-checkzone checks out-of-zone addresses by default.
To disable this default set. -DCHECK_LOCAL=0
To create the default pid files in ${localstatedir}/run rather
than ${localstatedir}/run/{named,lwresd}/ set.
Enable workaround for Solaris kernel bug about
/dev/poll -DISC_SOCKET_USE_POLLWATCH=1
The watch timeout is also configurable,
e.g.,
-DISC_SOCKET_POLLWATCH_TIMEOUT=20
Linker flags. Defaults to empty string.
The following need to be set when cross compiling.
BUILD_CPPFLAGS (optional)
-DNEED_OPTARG=1 (optarg is not declared in <
unistd.h>)
On most platforms, BIND 9 is built with multithreading
support, allowing it to take advantage of multiple CPUs.
You can configure this by specifying "--enable-threads" or
"--disable-threads" on the configure command line. The default
is to enable threads, except on some older operating systems
on which threads are known to have had problems in the past.
(Note: Prior to BIND 9.10, the default was to disable threads on
Linux systems; this has been reversed. On Linux systems, the
threaded build is known to change BIND's behavior with respect
to file permissions; it may be necessary to specify a user with
the -u option when running named.)
To build shared libraries, specify "--with-libtool" on the
For the server to support DNSSEC, you need to build it
with crypto support. You must have OpenSSL 0.9.5a
or newer installed and specify "--with-openssl" on the
configure command line. If OpenSSL is installed under
a nonstandard prefix, you can tell configure where to
look for it using "--with-openssl=/prefix".
To support the HTTP statistics channel, the server must
be linked with at least one of the following: libxml2
If these are installed at a nonstandard prefix, use
"--with-libxml2=/prefix" or "--with-libjson=/prefix".
On some platforms it is necessary to explictly request large
file support to handle files bigger than 2GB. This can be
done by "--enable-largefile" on the configure command line.
Support for the "fixed" rrset-order option can be enabled
or disabled by specifying "--enable-fixed-rrset" or
"--disable-fixed-rrset" on the configure command line.
The default is "disabled", to reduce memory footprint.
If your operating system has integrated support for IPv6, it
will be used automatically. If you have installed KAME IPv6
separately, use "--with-kame[=PATH]" to specify its location.
"make install" will install "named" and the various BIND 9 libraries.
By default, installation is into
/usr/local, but this can be changed
with the "--prefix" option when running "configure".
You may specify the option "--sysconfdir" to set the directory
where configuration files like "
named.conf" go by default,
and "--localstatedir" to set the default parent directory
--sysconfdir defaults to "/etc" and --localstatedir defaults to
"/var" if no --prefix option is given. If there is a --prefix
option, sysconfdir defaults to "$
prefix/etc" and localstatedir
To see additional configure options, run "configure --help".
Note that the help message does not reflect the BIND 8
compatibility defaults for sysconfdir and localstatedir.
If you're planning on making changes to the BIND 9 source, you
should also "make depend". If you're using Emacs, you might find
If you need to re-run configure please run "make distclean" first.
This will ensure that all the option changes take.
Building with gcc is not supported, unless gcc is the vendor's usual
compiler (
e.g. the various BSD systems, Linux).
* gcc-3.2.1 and gcc-3.1.1 is known to cause problems with solaris-x86.
* gcc prior to gcc-3.2.3 ultrasparc generates incorrect code at -02.
* gcc-3.3.5 powerpc generates incorrect code at -02.
* Irix, MipsPRO 7.4.1m is known to cause problems.
A limited test suite can be run with "make test". Many of
the tests require you to configure a set of virtual IP addresses
SunOS 4 requires "printf" to be installed to make the shared
libraries. sh-utils-1.16 provides a "printf" which compiles
Linux requires kernel build 2.6.39 or later to get the
performance benefits from using multiple sockets.
The BIND 9 Administrator Reference Manual is included with the
source distribution in DocBook XML and HTML format, in the
Some of the programs in the BIND 9 distribution have man pages
in their directories. In particular, the command line
There is now also a set of man pages for the lwres library.
If you are upgrading from BIND 8, please read the migration
Frequently asked questions and their answers can be found in
Additional information on various subjects can be found
in the other README files.
A detailed list of all changes to BIND 9 is included in the
file CHANGES, with the most recent changes listed first.
Change notes include tags indicating the category of the
change that was made; these categories are:
[security] Fix for a significant security flaw
[experimental] Used for new features when the syntax
or other aspects of the design are still
[port] Portability enhancement
[maint] Updates to built-in data such as root
server addresses and keys
[tuning] Changes to built-in configuration defaults
and constants to improve performanceo
[protocol] Updates to the DNS protocol such as new
[test] Changes to the automatic tests, not
affecting server functionality
[cleanup] Minor corrections and refactoring
In general, [func] and [experimental] tags will only appear
in new-feature releases (
i.e., those with version numbers
ending in zero). Some new functionality may be backported to
older releases on a case-by-case basis. All other change
types may be applied to all currently-supported releases.
Bug Reports and Mailing Lists
Bugs reports should be sent to
To join the BIND Users mailing list, send mail to
bind-users-request@isc.org
archives of which can be found via
If you're planning on making changes to the BIND 9 source
code, you might want to join the BIND Workers mailing list.
bind-workers-request@isc.org