BIND 9.2.3, large zone xfer and 100% CPU Utilization

[Mike Diggins]

On Wed, 21 Apr 2004, Alex Rainchik wrote:

> Hello,
>
> We are using BIND 9.2.3 on Solaris8, transfering ~45Mb zone from mail-abuse.com
> every three hours, as they don't support IXFR feature. The issue we have is that
> at the end of the transfer "named" goes berserk and CPU utlilization goes trough
> the roof, up to 100% for about 5-10 minutes.
>
> During those 5-10 minutes "named" does not respond to any queries, "rdnc status"
> does not work either. It's the only zone xfer running at that time....
>
> Just wondering if it's a bug or a feature?

Alex, I'm also running Bind 9.2.3 on Solaris 8 (Ultra 10) and downloading
the mail abuse zone with exactly the same result. I am also seeking a
solution! I was going to post this question anyway so I might as well ask
in this same thread.

If I were to compile BIND on a another dual processor system and enable
multi-threading (I read BIND supports that but I don't really know how to
enable it)  can I count on BIND to updates zones (even the BIG mail abuse
zone) AND answer queries at the same time? I can't tolerate the several
minutes of down time while this zone reloads and management doesn't want
to revert to querying the mail abuse DNS servers directly.

-Mike