BIND 9.4 Administrator Reference Manual, HTML edition

BIND 9 Administrator Reference Manual


Table of Contents

1. Introduction
Scope of Document
Organization of This Document
Conventions Used in This Document
The Domain Name System (DNS)
DNS Fundamentals
Domains and Domain Names
Zones
Authoritative Name Servers
Caching Name Servers
Name Servers in Multiple
Roles
2. BIND Resource
Requirements
Hardware requirements
CPU Requirements
Memory Requirements
Name Server Intensive Environment
Issues
Supported Operating Systems
3. Name Server Configuration
Sample Configurations
A Caching-only Name Server
An Authoritative-only
Name Server
Load Balancing
Name Server Operations
Tools for Use With the
Name Server Daemon
Signals
4. Advanced DNS Features
Notify
Dynamic Update
The journal file
Incremental
Zone Transfers (IXFR)
Split DNS
TSIG
Generate Shared Keys for
Each Pair of Hosts
Copying the Shared Secret
to Both Machines
Informing the Servers
of the Key's Existence
Instructing the Server
to Use the Key
TSIG Key Based Access
Control
Errors
TKEY
SIG(0)
DNSSEC
Generating Keys
Signing the Zone
Configuring Servers
IPv6 Support in BIND 9
Address Lookups Using
AAAA Records
Address to Name Lookups
Using Nibble Format
5. The BIND 9
Lightweight Resolver
The Lightweight Resolver Library
Running a Resolver Daemon
6. BIND 9
Configuration Reference
Configuration
File Elements
Address Match
Lists
Comment Syntax
Configuration
File Grammar
acl Statement
Grammar
acl Statement
Definition and Usage
controls Statement
Grammar
controls Statement
Definition and Usage
include Statement
Grammar
include Statement
Definition and Usage
key Statement
Grammar
key Statement
Definition and Usage
logging Statement
Grammar
logging Statement
Definition and Usage
lwres Statement
Grammar
lwres Statement
Definition and Usage
masters Statement
Grammar
masters Statement
Definition and Usage
options Statement
Grammar
options Statement
Definition and Usage
server Statement
Grammar
server Statement
Definition and Usage
trusted-keys Statement
Grammar
trusted-keys Statement
Definition and Usage
view Statement
Grammar
view Statement
Definition and Usage
zone Statement
Grammar
zone Statement
Definition and Usage
Zone File
Types
of Resource Records and When to Use Them
Discussion of MX Records
Setting TTLs
Inverse Mapping in IPv4
Other Zone File Directives
BIND Master
File Extension: the $GENERATE Directive
Additional File
Formats
7. BIND 9
Security Considerations
Access Control
Lists
chroot and setuid
The chroot Environment
Using the setuid Function
Dynamic Update
Security
8. Troubleshooting
Common Problems
It's not working; how
can I figure out what's wrong?
Incrementing and Changing
the Serial Number
Where Can I Get Help?
A. Appendices
Acknowledgments
A Brief
History of the DNS and BIND
General DNS Reference
Information
IPv6 addresses (AAAA)
Bibliography (and Suggested
Reading)
Request for Comments (RFCs)
Internet Drafts
Other Documents About BIND
I. Manual pages
dig — DNS
lookup utility
host — DNS
lookup utility
dnssec-keygen — DNSSEC
key generation tool
dnssec-signzone — DNSSEC
zone signing tool
named-checkconf — named
configuration file syntax checking tool
named-checkzone — zone
file validity checking or converting tool
named — Internet
domain name server
rndc — name
server control utility
rndc.conf — rndc
configuration file
rndc-confgen — rndc
key generation tool

Chapter 1. Introduction

The Internet Domain Name System (DNS)
consists of the syntax to specify the names of entities in the Internet in
a hierarchical manner, the rules used for delegating authority over names,
and the system implementation that actually maps names to Internet addresses. DNS data
is maintained in a group of distributed hierarchical databases.

Scope
of Document

The Berkeley Internet Name Domain (BIND)
implements a domain name server for a number of operating systems. This document
provides basic information about the installation and care of the Internet
Systems Consortium (ISC) BIND version
9 software package for system administrators.

This version of the manual corresponds to BIND version 9.4.

Organization
of This Document

In this document, Section 1 introduces
the basic DNS and BIND concepts. Section
2
describes resource requirements for running BIND in
various environments. Information in Section 3 is task-oriented in
its presentation and is organized functionally, to aid in the process of
installing the BIND 9 software. The task-oriented
section is followed by Section 4,
which contains more advanced concepts that the system administrator may need
for implementing certain options. Section 5 describes
the BIND 9 lightweight resolver. The contents
of Section 6 are organized as in a
reference manual to aid in the ongoing maintenance of the software. Section
7
addresses security considerations, and Section
8
contains troubleshooting help. The main body of the document
is followed by several Appendices which
contain useful reference information, such as a Bibliography and
historic information related to BIND and
the Domain Name System.

Conventions
Used in This Document

In this document, we use the following general typographic conventions:



To describe:

We use the style:

a pathname, filename, URL, hostname, mailing list name, or
new term or concept

Fixed width

literal user input

Fixed Width Bold

program output

Fixed Width

The following conventions are used in descriptions of the BIND configuration
file:



To describe:

We use the style:

keywords

Fixed Width

variables

Fixed Width

Optional input

[Text is enclosed in square brackets]

The Domain
Name System (DNS)

The purpose of this document is to explain the installation and upkeep
of the BIND software package, and we begin
by reviewing the fundamentals of the Domain Name System (DNS)
as they relate to BIND.

DNS Fundamentals

The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical, distributed database.
It stores information for mapping Internet host names to IP addresses and
vice versa, mail routing information, and other data used by Internet applications.

Clients look up information in the DNS by calling a resolver library,
which sends queries to one or more name servers and
interprets the responses. The BIND 9
software distribution contains a name server, named,
and two resolver libraries, liblwres and libbind.

Domains and Domain Names

The data stored in the DNS is identified by domain
names
that are organized as a tree according to organizational
or administrative boundaries. Each node of the tree, called a domain,
is given a label. The domain name of the node is the concatenation
of all the labels on the path from the node to the root node.
This is represented in written form as a string of labels listed from
right to left and separated by dots. A label need only be unique within
its parent domain.

For example, a domain name for a host at the company Example,
Inc.
could be ourhost.example.com,
where com is the top level domain to which ourhost.example.com belongs, example is
a subdomain of com, and ourhost is
the name of the host.

For administrative purposes, the name space is partitioned into areas
called zones, each starting at a
node and extending down to the leaf nodes or to nodes where other zones
start. The data for each zone is stored in a name
server
, which answers queries about the zone using the DNS
protocol
.

The data associated with each domain name is stored in the form of resource
records
(RRs). Some
of the supported resource record types are described in the
section called “Types of Resource Records and When to Use Them”
.

For more detailed information about the design of the DNS and the DNS
protocol, please refer to the standards documents listed in the
section called “Request for Comments (RFCs)”
.

Zones

To properly operate a name server, it is important to understand the
difference between a zone and a domain.

As stated previously, a zone is a point of delegation in the DNS tree.
A zone consists of those contiguous parts of the domain tree for which
a name server has complete information and over which it has authority.
It contains all domain names from a certain point downward in the domain
tree except those which are delegated to other zones. A delegation point
is marked by one or more NS records in
the parent zone, which should be matched by equivalent NS records at the
root of the delegated zone.

For instance, consider the example.com domain
which includes names such as host.aaa.example.com and host.bbb.example.com even
though the example.com zone includes only
delegations for the aaa.example.com and bbb.example.com zones.
A zone can map exactly to a single domain, but could also include only
part of a domain, the rest of which could be delegated to other name servers.
Every name in the DNS tree is a domain,
even if it is terminal, that is,
has no subdomains. Every subdomain
is a domain and every domain except the root is also a subdomain. The terminology
is not intuitive and we suggest that you read RFCs 1033, 1034 and 1035
to gain a complete understanding of this difficult and subtle topic.

Though BIND is called a "domain name
server", it deals primarily in terms of zones. The master and slave declarations
in the named.conf file specify zones, not
domains. When you ask some other site if it is willing to be a slave server
for your domain, you are actually
asking for slave service for some collection of zones.

Authoritative Name Servers

Each zone is served by at least one authoritative
name server
, which contains the complete data for the zone.
To make the DNS tolerant of server and network failures, most zones
have two or more authoritative servers, on different networks.

Responses from authoritative servers have the "authoritative answer" (AA)
bit set in the response packets. This makes them easy to identify when
debugging DNS configurations using tools like dig (the
section called “Diagnostic Tools”
).

The Primary Master

The authoritative server where the master copy of the zone data is
maintained is called the primary master server,
or simply the primary. Typically
it loads the zone contents from some local file edited by humans or perhaps
generated mechanically from some other local file which is edited by
humans. This file is called the zone file or master
file
.

In some cases, however, the master file may not be edited by humans
at all, but may instead be the result of dynamic
update
operations.

Slave Servers

The other authoritative servers, the slave servers
(also known as secondary servers)
load the zone contents from another server using a replication process
known as a zone transfer. Typically
the data are transferred directly from the primary master, but it is
also possible to transfer it from another slave. In other words, a slave
server may itself act as a master to a subordinate slave server.

Stealth Servers

Usually all of the zone's authoritative servers are listed in NS records
in the parent zone. These NS records constitute a delegation of
the zone from the parent. The authoritative servers are also listed in
the zone file itself, at the top level or apex of
the zone. You can list servers in the zone's top-level NS records that
are not in the parent's NS delegation, but you cannot list servers in
the parent's delegation that are not present at the zone's top level.

A stealth server is a server
that is authoritative for a zone but is not listed in that zone's NS
records. Stealth servers can be used for keeping a local copy of a zone
to speed up access to the zone's records or to make sure that the zone
is available even if all the "official" servers for the zone are inaccessible.

A configuration where the primary master server itself is a stealth
server is often referred to as a "hidden primary"
configuration. One use for this configuration is when the primary master
is behind a firewall and therefore unable to communicate directly with
the outside world.

Caching Name Servers

The resolver libraries provided by most operating systems are stub
resolvers
, meaning that they are not capable of performing
the full DNS resolution process by themselves by talking directly to
the authoritative servers. Instead, they rely on a local name server
to perform the resolution on their behalf. Such a server is called
a recursive name server; it
performs recursive lookups for
local clients.

To improve performance, recursive servers cache the results of the lookups
they perform. Since the processes of recursion and caching are intimately
connected, the terms recursive server and caching
server
are often used synonymously.

The length of time for which a record may be retained in the cache of
a caching name server is controlled by the Time To Live (TTL) field associated
with each resource record.

Forwarding

Even a caching name server does not necessarily perform the complete
recursive lookup itself. Instead, it can forward some
or all of the queries that it cannot satisfy from its cache to another
caching name server, commonly referred to as a forwarder.

There may be one or more forwarders, and they are queried in turn until
the list is exhausted or an answer is found. Forwarders are typically
used when you do not wish all the servers at a given site to interact
directly with the rest of the Internet servers. A typical scenario would
involve a number of internal DNS servers
and an Internet firewall. Servers unable to pass packets through the
firewall would forward to the server that can do it, and that server
would query the Internet DNS servers
on the internal server's behalf.

Name Servers in Multiple
Roles

The BIND name server can simultaneously
act as a master for some zones, a slave for other zones, and as a caching
(recursive) server for a set of local clients.

However, since the functions of authoritative name service and caching/recursive
name service are logically separate, it is often advantageous to run them
on separate server machines. A server that only provides authoritative
name service (an authoritative-only server)
can run with recursion disabled, improving reliability and security. A
server that is not authoritative for any zones and only provides recursive
service to local clients (a caching-only server)
does not need to be reachable from the Internet at large and can be placed
inside a firewall.

Chapter 2. BIND Resource
Requirements

Hardware
requirements

DNS hardware requirements have traditionally
been quite modest. For many installations, servers that have been pensioned
off from active duty have performed admirably as DNS servers.

The DNSSEC features of BIND 9 may prove
to be quite CPU intensive however, so organizations that make heavy use of
these features may wish to consider larger systems for these applications. BIND 9
is fully multithreaded, allowing full utilization of multiprocessor systems
for installations that need it.

CPU Requirements

CPU requirements for BIND 9 range from
i486-class machines for serving of static zones without caching, to enterprise-class
machines if you intend to process many dynamic updates and DNSSEC signed
zones, serving many thousands of queries per second.

Memory
Requirements

The memory of the server has to be large enough to fit the cache and zones
loaded off disk. The max-cache-size option
can be used to limit the amount of memory used by the cache, at the expense
of reducing cache hit rates and causing more DNS traffic.
Additionally, if additional section caching (the
section called “Additional Section Caching”
) is enabled,
the max-acache-size can be
used to limit the amount of memory used by the mechanism. It is still good
practice to have enough memory to load all zone and cache data into memory — unfortunately,
the best way to determine this for a given installation is to watch the name
server in operation. After a few weeks the server process should reach a
relatively stable size where entries are expiring from the cache as fast
as they are being inserted.

Name Server
Intensive Environment Issues

For name server intensive environments, there are two alternative configurations
that may be used. The first is where clients and any second-level internal
name servers query a main name server, which has enough memory to build a
large cache. This approach minimizes the bandwidth used by external name
lookups. The second alternative is to set up second-level internal name servers
to make queries independently. In this configuration, none of the individual
machines needs to have as much memory or CPU power as in the first alternative,
but this has the disadvantage of making many more external queries, as none
of the name servers share their cached data.

Supported
Operating Systems

ISC BIND 9 compiles and runs on a large
number of Unix-like operating system and on NT-derived versions of Microsoft
Windows such as Windows 2000 and Windows XP. For an up-to-date list of supported
systems, see the README file in the top level directory of the BIND 9 source
distribution.

Chapter 3. Name Server Configuration

In this section we provide some suggested configurations along with guidelines
for their use. We suggest reasonable values for certain option settings.

Sample
Configurations

A Caching-only Name Server

The following sample configuration is appropriate for a caching-only
name server for use by clients internal to a corporation. All queries from
outside clients are refused using the allow-query option.
Alternatively, the same effect could be achieved using suitable firewall
rules.

// Two corporate subnets we wish to allow queries from.
acl corpnets { 192.168.4.0/24; 192.168.7.0/24; };
options {
     directory "/etc/namedb";           // Working directory
     allow-query { corpnets; };
};
// Provide a reverse mapping for the loopback address 127.0.0.1
zone "0.0.127.in-addr.arpa" {
     type master;
     file "localhost.rev";
     notify no;
};

An Authoritative-only Name
Server

This sample configuration is for an authoritative-only server that is
the master server for "example.com"
and a slave for the subdomain "eng.example.com".

options {
     directory "/etc/namedb";           // Working directory
     allow-query-cache { none; };       // Do not allow access to cache
     allow-query { any; };              // This is the default
     recursion no;                      // Do not provide recursive service
};

// Provide a reverse mapping for the loopback address 127.0.0.1
zone "0.0.127.in-addr.arpa" {
     type master;
     file "localhost.rev";
     notify no;
};
// We are the master server for example.com
zone "example.com" {
     type master;
     file "example.com.db";
     // IP addresses of slave servers allowed to transfer example.com
     allow-transfer {
          192.168.4.14;
          192.168.5.53;
     };
};
// We are a slave server for eng.example.com
zone "eng.example.com" {
     type slave;
     file "eng.example.com.bk";
     // IP address of eng.example.com master server
     masters { 192.168.4.12; };
};

Load Balancing

A primitive form of load balancing can be achieved in the DNS by
using multiple A records for one name.

For example, if you have three WWW servers with network addresses of 10.0.0.1,
10.0.0.2 and 10.0.0.3, a set of records such as the following means that
clients will connect to each machine one third of the time:






Name

TTL

CLASS

TYPE

Resource Record (RR) Data

www

600

IN

A

10.0.0.1

 

600

IN

A

10.0.0.2

 

600

IN

A

10.0.0.3

When a resolver queries for these records, BIND will
rotate them and respond to the query with the records in a different order.
In the example above, clients will randomly receive records in the order
1, 2, 3; 2, 3, 1; and 3, 1, 2. Most clients will use the first record returned
and discard the rest.

For more detail on ordering responses, check the rrset-order substatement
in the options statement, see RRset
Ordering
.

Name Server
Operations

Tools for Use With the Name
Server Daemon

This section describes several indispensable diagnostic, administrative
and monitoring tools available to the system administrator for controlling
and debugging the name server daemon.

Diagnostic Tools

The dig, host,
and nslookup programs are
all command line tools for manually querying name servers. They differ
in style and output format.

dig

The domain information groper (dig)
is the most versatile and complete of these lookup tools. It has
two modes: simple interactive mode for a single query, and batch
mode which executes a query for each in a list of several query
lines. All query options are accessible from the command line.

dig [@server] domain [query-type]
[query-class] [+query-option]
[-dig-option] [%comment]

The usual simple use of dig will take the form

dig @server domain query-type query-class

For more information and a list of available commands and options,
see the dig man page.

host

The host utility
emphasizes simplicity and ease of use. By default, it converts
between host names and Internet addresses, but its functionality
can be extended with the use of options.

host [-aCdlrTwv] [-c class]
[-N ndots] [-t type]
[-W timeout] [-R retries] hostname [server]

For more information and a list of available commands and options,
see the host man
page.

nslookup

nslookup has two
modes: interactive and non-interactive. Interactive mode allows
the user to query name servers for information about various hosts
and domains or to print a list of hosts in a domain. Non-interactive
mode is used to print just the name and requested information for
a host or domain.

nslookup [-option...] [[host-to-find]
| [- [server]]]

Interactive mode is entered when no arguments are given (the
default name server will be used) or when the first argument is
a hyphen (`-') and the second argument is the host name or Internet
address of a name server.

Non-interactive mode is used when the name or Internet address
of the host to be looked up is given as the first argument. The
optional second argument specifies the host name or address of
a name server.

Due to its arcane user interface and frequently inconsistent
behavior, we do not recommend the use of nslookup.
Use dig instead.

Administrative Tools

Administrative tools play an integral part in the management of a server.

named-checkconf

The named-checkconf program
checks the syntax of a named.conf file.

named-checkconf [-jvz] [-t directory]
[filename]

named-checkzone

The named-checkzone program
checks a master file for syntax and consistency.

named-checkzone [-djqvD] [-c class]
[-o output] [-t directory]
[-w directory] [-k (ignore|warn|fail)]
[-n (ignore|warn|fail)]
[-W (ignore|warn)] zone [filename]

named-compilezone

Similar to named-checkzone, but
it always dumps the zone content to a specified file (typically
in a different format).

rndc

The remote name daemon control (rndc)
program allows the system administrator to control the operation
of a name server. If you run rndc without
any options it will display a usage message as follows:

rndc [-c config]
[-s server] [-p port]
[-y key] command [command...]

The command is one
of the following:

reload

Reload configuration file and zones.

reload zone [class [view]]

Reload the given zone.

refresh zone [class [view]]

Schedule zone maintenance for the given zone.

retransfer zone [class [view]]

Retransfer the given zone from the master.

freeze
[zone [class [view]]]

Suspend updates to a dynamic zone. If no zone is specified,
then all zones are suspended. This allows manual edits to
be made to a zone normally updated by dynamic update. It
also causes changes in the journal file to be synced into
the master and the journal file to be removed. All dynamic
update attempts will be refused while the zone is frozen.

thaw [zone [class [view]]]

Enable updates to a frozen dynamic zone. If no zone is
specified, then all frozen zones are enabled. This causes
the server to reload the zone from disk, and re-enables dynamic
updates after the load has completed. After a zone is thawed,
dynamic updates will no longer be refused.

notify zone [class [view]]

Resend NOTIFY messages for the zone.

reconfig

Reload the configuration file and load new zones, but do
not reload existing zone files even if they have changed.
This is faster than a full reload when
there is a large number of zones because it avoids the need
to examine the modification times of the zones files.

stats

Write server statistics to the statistics file.

querylog

Toggle query logging. Query logging can also be enabled
by explicitly directing the queries category to
a channel in
the logging section
of named.conf or by specifying querylog
yes;
in the options section
of named.conf.

dumpdb
[-all|-cache|-zone] [view
...
]

Dump the server's caches (default) and/or zones to the
dump file for the specified views. If no view is specified,
all views are dumped.

stop [-p]

Stop the server, making sure any recent changes made through
dynamic update or IXFR are first saved to the master files
of the updated zones. If -p is specified named's process
id is returned. This allows an external process to determine
when named had completed stopping.

halt [-p]

Stop the server immediately. Recent changes made through
dynamic update or IXFR are not saved to the master files,
but will be rolled forward from the journal files when the
server is restarted. If -p is specified named's process id
is returned. This allows an external process to determine
when named had completed halting.

trace

Increment the servers debugging level by one.

trace level

Sets the server's debugging level to an explicit value.

notrace

Sets the server's debugging level to 0.

flush

Flushes the server's cache.

flushname name

Flushes the given name from the server's cache.

status

Display status of the server. Note that the number of zones
includes the internal bind/CH zone
and the default ./IN hint
zone if there is not an explicit root zone configured.

recursing

Dump the list of queries named is currently recursing on.

In BIND 9.2, rndc supports
all the commands of the BIND 8 ndc utility
except ndc start and ndc
restart
, which were also not supported in ndc's
channel mode.

A configuration file is required, since all communication with
the server is authenticated with digital signatures that rely on
a shared secret, and there is no way to provide that secret other
than with a configuration file. The default location for the rndc configuration
file is /etc/rndc.conf, but an alternate
location can be specified with the -c option.
If the configuration file is not found, rndc will
also look in /etc/rndc.key (or whatever sysconfdir was
defined when the BIND build
was configured). The rndc.key file
is generated by running rndc-confgen
-a
as described in the section called “controls Statement
Definition and Usage”
.

The format of the configuration file is similar to that of named.conf,
but limited to only four statements, the options, key, server and include statements.
These statements are what associate the secret keys to the servers
with which they are meant to be shared. The order of statements
is not significant.

The options statement
has three clauses: default-server, default-key,
and default-port. default-server takes
a host name or address argument and represents the server that
will be contacted if no -s option is
provided on the command line. default-key takes
the name of a key as its argument, as defined by a key statement. default-port specifies
the port to which rndc should
connect if no port is given on the command line or in a server statement.

The key statement
defines a key to be used by rndc when
authenticating with named.
Its syntax is identical to the key statement
in named.conf. The keyword key is
followed by a key name, which must be a valid domain name, though
it need not actually be hierarchical; thus, a string like "rndc_key" is
a valid name. The key statement
has two clauses: algorithm and secret.
While the configuration parser will accept any string as the argument
to algorithm, currently only the string "hmac-md5"
has any meaning. The secret is a base-64 encoded string as specified
in RFC 3548.

The server statement
associates a key defined using the key statement
with a server. The keyword server is
followed by a host name or address. The server statement
has two clauses: key and port.
The key clause specifies
the name of the key to be used when communicating with this server,
and the port clause
can be used to specify the port rndc should
connect to on the server.

A sample minimal configuration file is as follows:

key rndc_key {
     algorithm "hmac-md5";
     secret "c3Ryb25nIGVub3VnaCBmb3IgYSBtYW4gYnV0IG1hZGUgZm9yIGEgd29tYW4K";
};
options {
     default-server 127.0.0.1;
     default-key    rndc_key;
};

This file, if installed as /etc/rndc.conf,
would allow the command:

$ rndc
reload

to connect to 127.0.0.1 port 953 and cause the name server to
reload, if a name server on the local machine were running with
following controls statements:

controls {
        inet 127.0.0.1 allow { localhost; } keys { rndc_key; };
};

and it had an identical key statement for rndc_key.

Running the rndc-confgen program
will conveniently create a rndc.conf file
for you, and also display the corresponding controls statement
that you need to add to named.conf.
Alternatively, you can run rndc-confgen
-a
to set up a rndc.key file
and not modify named.conf at all.

Signals

Certain UNIX signals cause the name server to take specific actions,
as described in the following table. These signals can be sent using the kill command.



SIGHUP

Causes the server to read named.conf and
reload the database.

SIGTERM

Causes the server to clean up and exit.

SIGINT

Causes the server to clean up and exit.

Chapter 4. Advanced DNS Features

Notify

DNS NOTIFY is a mechanism that allows
master servers to notify their slave servers of changes to a zone's data.
In response to a NOTIFY from
a master server, the slave will check to see that its version of the zone
is the current version and, if not, initiate a zone transfer.

For more information about DNS NOTIFY,
see the description of the notify option
in the section called “Boolean
Options”
and the description of the zone option also-notify in the
section called “Zone Transfers”
. The NOTIFY protocol
is specified in RFC 1996.

Note

As a slave zone can also be a master to other slaves, named, by default,
sends NOTIFY messages for every
zone it loads. Specifying notify master-only; will
cause named to only send NOTIFY for
master zones that it loads.

Dynamic
Update

Dynamic Update is a method for adding, replacing or deleting records in
a master server by sending it a special form of DNS messages. The format
and meaning of these messages is specified in RFC 2136.

Dynamic update is enabled by including an allow-update or update-policy clause
in the zone statement.

Updating of secure zones (zones using DNSSEC) follows RFC 3007: RRSIG and
NSEC records affected by updates are automatically regenerated by the server
using an online zone key. Update authorization is based on transaction signatures
and an explicit server policy.

The journal file

All changes made to a zone using dynamic update are stored in the zone's
journal file. This file is automatically created by the server when the
first dynamic update takes place. The name of the journal file is formed
by appending the extension .jnl to the name
of the corresponding zone file unless specifically overridden. The journal
file is in a binary format and should not be edited manually.

The server will also occasionally write ("dump") the complete contents
of the updated zone to its zone file. This is not done immediately after
each dynamic update, because that would be too slow when a large zone is
updated frequently. Instead, the dump is delayed by up to 15 minutes, allowing
additional updates to take place.

When a server is restarted after a shutdown or crash, it will replay
the journal file to incorporate into the zone any updates that took place
after the last zone dump.

Changes that result from incoming incremental zone transfers are also
journalled in a similar way.

The zone files of dynamic zones cannot normally be edited by hand because
they are not guaranteed to contain the most recent dynamic changes — those
are only in the journal file. The only way to ensure that the zone file
of a dynamic zone is up to date is to run rndc
stop
.

If you have to make changes to a dynamic zone manually, the following
procedure will work: Disable dynamic updates to the zone using rndc
freeze zone
.
This will also remove the zone's .jnl file
and update the master file. Edit the zone file. Run rndc
thaw zone
to
reload the changed zone and re-enable dynamic updates.

Incremental
Zone Transfers (IXFR)

The incremental zone transfer (IXFR) protocol is a way for slave servers
to transfer only changed data, instead of having to transfer the entire zone.
The IXFR protocol is specified in RFC 1995. See Proposed
Standards
.

When acting as a master, BIND 9 supports
IXFR for those zones where the necessary change history information is available.
These include master zones maintained by dynamic update and slave zones whose
data was obtained by IXFR. For manually maintained master zones, and for
slave zones obtained by performing a full zone transfer (AXFR), IXFR is supported
only if the option ixfr-from-differences is
set to yes.

When acting as a slave, BIND 9 will
attempt to use IXFR unless it is explicitly disabled. For more information
about disabling IXFR, see the description of the request-ixfr clause
of the server statement.

Split
DNS

Setting up different views, or visibility, of the DNS space to internal
and external resolvers is usually referred to as a Split
DNS
setup. There are several reasons an organization would want
to set up its DNS this way.

One common reason for setting up a DNS system this way is to hide "internal" DNS
information from "external" clients on the Internet. There is some debate
as to whether or not this is actually useful. Internal DNS information leaks
out in many ways (via email headers, for example) and most savvy "attackers" can
find the information they need using other means. However, since listing
addresses of internal servers that external clients cannot possibly reach
can result in connection delays and other annoyances, an organization may
choose to use a Split DNS to present a consistant view of itself to the outside
world.

Another common reason for setting up a Split DNS system is to allow internal
networks that are behind filters or in RFC 1918 space (reserved IP space,
as documented in RFC 1918) to resolve DNS on the Internet. Split DNS can
also be used to allow mail from outside back in to the internal network.

Here is an example of a split DNS setup:

Let's say a company named Example, Inc. (example.com)
has several corporate sites that have an internal network with reserved Internet
Protocol (IP) space and an external demilitarized zone (DMZ), or "outside" section
of a network, that is available to the public.

Example, Inc. wants its internal
clients to be able to resolve external hostnames and to exchange mail with
people on the outside. The company also wants its internal resolvers to have
access to certain internal-only zones that are not available at all outside
of the internal network.

In order to accomplish this, the company will set up two sets of name servers.
One set will be on the inside network (in the reserved IP space) and the
other set will be on bastion hosts, which are
"proxy"
hosts that can talk to both sides of its network, in the DMZ.

The internal servers will be configured to forward all queries, except
queries for site1.internal, site2.internal, site1.example.com,
and site2.example.com, to the servers in the
DMZ. These internal servers will have complete sets of information for site1.example.com, site2.example.com, site1.internal,
and site2.internal.

To protect the site1.internal and site2.internal domains,
the internal name servers must be configured to disallow all queries to these
domains from any external hosts, including the bastion hosts.

The external servers, which are on the bastion hosts, will be configured
to serve the "public" version of the site1 and site2.example.com zones.
This could include things such as the host records for public servers (www.example.com and ftp.example.com),
and mail exchange (MX) records (a.mx.example.com and b.mx.example.com).

In addition, the public site1 and site2.example.com zones
should have special MX records that contain wildcard (`*') records pointing
to the bastion hosts. This is needed because external mail servers do not
have any other way of looking up how to deliver mail to those internal hosts.
With the wildcard records, the mail will be delivered to the bastion host,
which can then forward it on to internal hosts.

Here's an example of a wildcard MX record:

*   IN MX 10 external1.example.com.

Now that they accept mail on behalf of anything in the internal network,
the bastion hosts will need to know how to deliver mail to internal hosts.
In order for this to work properly, the resolvers on the bastion hosts will
need to be configured to point to the internal name servers for DNS resolution.

Queries for internal hostnames will be answered by the internal servers,
and queries for external hostnames will be forwarded back out to the DNS
servers on the bastion hosts.

In order for all this to work properly, internal clients will need to be
configured to query only the internal
name servers for DNS queries. This could also be enforced via selective filtering
on the network.

If everything has been set properly, Example,
Inc.
's internal clients will now be able to:

  • Look up any hostnames in the site1 and site2.example.com zones.
  • Look up any hostnames in the site1.internal and site2.internal domains.
  • Look up any hostnames on the Internet.
  • Exchange mail with both internal and external people.

Hosts on the Internet will be able to:

  • Look up any hostnames in the site1 and site2.example.com zones.
  • Exchange mail with anyone in the site1 and site2.example.com zones.

Here is an example configuration for the setup we just described above.
Note that this is only configuration information; for information on how
to configure your zone files, see the
section called “Sample Configurations”
.

Internal DNS server config:


acl internals { 172.16.72.0/24; 192.168.1.0/24; };

acl externals { bastion-ips-go-here; };

options {
    ...
    ...
    forward only;
    forwarders {                                // forward to external servers
        bastion-ips-go-here;
    };
    allow-transfer { none; };                   // sample allow-transfer (no one)
    allow-query { internals; externals; };      // restrict query access
    allow-recursion { internals; };             // restrict recursion
    ...
    ...
};

zone "site1.example.com" {                      // sample master zone
  type master;
  file "m/site1.example.com";
  forwarders { };                               // do normal iterative
                                                // resolution (do not forward)
  allow-query { internals; externals; };
  allow-transfer { internals; };
};

zone "site2.example.com" {                      // sample slave zone
  type slave;
  file "s/site2.example.com";
  masters { 172.16.72.3; };
  forwarders { };
  allow-query { internals; externals; };
  allow-transfer { internals; };
};

zone "site1.internal" {
  type master;
  file "m/site1.internal";
  forwarders { };
  allow-query { internals; };
  allow-transfer { internals; }
};

zone "site2.internal" {
  type slave;
  file "s/site2.internal";
  masters { 172.16.72.3; };
  forwarders { };
  allow-query { internals };
  allow-transfer { internals; }
};

External (bastion host) DNS server config:

acl internals { 172.16.72.0/24; 192.168.1.0/24; };

acl externals { bastion-ips-go-here; };

options {
  ...
  ...
  allow-transfer { none; };                     // sample allow-transfer (no one)
  allow-query { any; };                         // default query access
  allow-query-cache { internals; externals; };  // restrict cache access
  allow-recursion { internals; externals; };    // restrict recursion
  ...
  ...
};

zone "site1.example.com" {                      // sample slave zone
  type master;
  file "m/site1.foo.com";
  allow-transfer { internals; externals; };
};

zone "site2.example.com" {
  type slave;
  file "s/site2.foo.com";
  masters { another_bastion_host_maybe; };
  allow-transfer { internals; externals; }
};

In the resolv.conf (or equivalent) on the
bastion host(s):

search ...
nameserver 172.16.72.2
nameserver 172.16.72.3
nameserver 172.16.72.4

TSIG

This is a short guide to setting up Transaction SIGnatures (TSIG) based
transaction security in BIND. It describes
changes to the configuration file as well as what changes are required for
different features, including the process of creating transaction keys and
using transaction signatures with BIND.

BIND primarily supports TSIG for server
to server communication. This includes zone transfer, notify, and recursive
query messages. Resolvers based on newer versions of BIND 8
have limited support for TSIG.

TSIG can also be useful for dynamic update. A primary server for a dynamic
zone should control access to the dynamic update service, but IP-based access
control is insufficient. The cryptographic access control provided by TSIG
is far superior. The nsupdate program
supports TSIG via the -k and -y command
line options or inline by use of the key.

Generate Shared Keys for
Each Pair of Hosts

A shared secret is generated to be shared between host1 and host2.
An arbitrary key name is chosen: "host1-host2.". The key name must be the
same on both hosts.

Automatic Generation

The following command will generate a 128-bit (16 byte) HMAC-MD5 key
as described above. Longer keys are better, but shorter keys are easier
to read. Note that the maximum key length is 512 bits; keys longer than
that will be digested with MD5 to produce a 128-bit key.

dnssec-keygen -a hmac-md5 -b 128 -n
HOST host1-host2.

The key is in the file Khost1-host2.+157+00000.private.
Nothing directly uses this file, but the base-64 encoded string following "Key:"
can be extracted from the file and used as a shared secret:

Key: La/E5CjG9O+os1jq0a2jdA==

The string "La/E5CjG9O+os1jq0a2jdA==" can
be used as the shared secret.

Manual Generation

The shared secret is simply a random sequence of bits, encoded in base-64.
Most ASCII strings are valid base-64 strings (assuming the length is
a multiple of 4 and only valid characters are used), so the shared secret
can be manually generated.

Also, a known string can be run through mmencode or
a similar program to generate base-64 encoded data.

Copying the Shared Secret
to Both Machines

This is beyond the scope of DNS. A secure transport mechanism should
be used. This could be secure FTP, ssh, telephone, etc.

Informing the Servers of
the Key's Existence

Imagine host1 and host
2
are both servers. The following is added to each server's named.conf file:

key host1-host2. {
  algorithm hmac-md5;
  secret "La/E5CjG9O+os1jq0a2jdA==";
};

The algorithm, hmac-md5, is the only one supported by BIND.
The secret is the one generated above. Since this is a secret, it is recommended
that either named.conf be non-world readable,
or the key directive be added to a non-world readable file that is included
by named.conf.

At this point, the key is recognized. This means that if the server receives
a message signed by this key, it can verify the signature. If the signature
is successfully verified, the response is signed by the same key.

Instructing the Server to
Use the Key

Since keys are shared between two hosts only, the server must be told
when keys are to be used. The following is added to the named.conf file
for host1, if the IP address of host2 is
10.1.2.3:

server 10.1.2.3 {
  keys { host1-host2. ;};
};

Multiple keys may be present, but only the first is used. This directive
does not contain any secrets, so it may be in a world-readable file.

If host1 sends a message that
is a request to that address, the message will be signed with the specified
key. host1 will expect any responses
to signed messages to be signed with the same key.

A similar statement must be present in host2's
configuration file (with host1's
address) for host2 to sign request
messages to host1.

TSIG Key Based Access Control

BIND allows IP addresses and ranges
to be specified in ACL definitions and allow-{
query | transfer | update }
directives. This has been extended
to allow TSIG keys also. The above key would be denoted key
host1-host2.

An example of an allow-update directive would be:

allow-update { key host1-host2. ;};

This allows dynamic updates to succeed only if the request was signed
by a key named
"host1-host2.".

You may want to read about the more powerful update-policy statement
in the
section called “Dynamic Update Policies”
.

Errors

The processing of TSIG signed messages can result in several errors.
If a signed message is sent to a non-TSIG aware server, a FORMERR (format
error) will be returned, since the server will not understand the record.
This is a result of misconfiguration, since the server must be explicitly
configured to send a TSIG signed message to a specific server.

If a TSIG aware server receives a message signed by an unknown key, the
response will be unsigned with the TSIG extended error code set to BADKEY.
If a TSIG aware server receives a message with a signature that does not
validate, the response will be unsigned with the TSIG extended error code
set to BADSIG. If a TSIG aware server receives a message with a time outside
of the allowed range, the response will be signed with the TSIG extended
error code set to BADTIME, and the time values will be adjusted so that
the response can be successfully verified. In any of these cases, the message's
rcode is set to NOTAUTH (not authenticated).

TKEY

TKEY is a mechanism for automatically
generating a shared secret between two hosts. There are several "modes" of TKEY that
specify how the key is generated or assigned. BIND 9
implements only one of these modes, the Diffie-Hellman key exchange. Both
hosts are required to have a Diffie-Hellman KEY record (although this record
is not required to be present in a zone). The TKEY process
must use signed messages, signed either by TSIG or SIG(0). The result of TKEY is
a shared secret that can be used to sign messages with TSIG. TKEY can
also be used to delete shared secrets that it had previously generated.

The TKEY process is initiated
by a client or server by sending a signed TKEY query
(including any appropriate KEYs) to a TKEY-aware server. The server response,
if it indicates success, will contain a TKEY record
and any appropriate keys. After this exchange, both participants have enough
information to determine the shared secret; the exact process depends on
the TKEY mode. When using the
Diffie-Hellman TKEY mode, Diffie-Hellman
keys are exchanged, and the shared secret is derived by both participants.

SIG(0)

BIND 9 partially supports DNSSEC SIG(0)
transaction signatures as specified in RFC 2535 and RFC2931. SIG(0) uses
public/private keys to authenticate messages. Access control is performed
in the same manner as TSIG keys; privileges can be granted or denied based
on the key name.

When a SIG(0) signed message is received, it will only be verified if the
key is known and trusted by the server; the server will not attempt to locate
and/or validate the key.

SIG(0) signing of multiple-message TCP streams is not supported.

The only tool shipped with BIND 9 that
generates SIG(0) signed messages is nsupdate.

DNSSEC

Cryptographic authentication of DNS information is possible through the
DNS Security (DNSSEC-bis) extensions,
defined in RFC 4033, RFC 4034 and RFC 4035. This section describes the creation
and use of DNSSEC signed zones.

In order to set up a DNSSEC secure zone, there are a series of steps which
must be followed. BIND 9 ships with several
tools that are used in this process, which are explained in more detail below.
In all cases, the -h option prints a full list
of parameters. Note that the DNSSEC tools require the keyset files to be
in the working directory or the directory specified by the -d option,
and that the tools shipped with BIND 9.2.x and earlier are not compatible
with the current ones.

There must also be communication with the administrators of the parent
and/or child zone to transmit keys. A zone's security status must be indicated
by the parent zone for a DNSSEC capable resolver to trust its data. This
is done through the presence or absence of a DS record
at the delegation point.

For other servers to trust data in this zone, they must either be statically
configured with this zone's zone key or the zone key of another zone above
this one in the DNS tree.

Generating Keys

The dnssec-keygen program
is used to generate keys.

A secure zone must contain one or more zone keys. The zone keys will
sign all other records in the zone, as well as the zone keys of any secure
delegated zones. Zone keys must have the same name as the zone, a name
type of ZONE, and must be
usable for authentication. It is recommended that zone keys use a cryptographic
algorithm designated as "mandatory to implement" by the IETF; currently
the only one is RSASHA1.

The following command will generate a 768-bit RSASHA1 key for the child.example zone:

dnssec-keygen -a RSASHA1 -b 768 -n ZONE
child.example.

Two output files will be produced: Kchild.example.+005+12345.key and Kchild.example.+005+12345.private (where
12345 is an example of a key tag). The key file names contain the key name
(child.example.), algorithm (3 is DSA, 1
is RSAMD5, 5 is RSASHA1, etc.), and the key tag (12345 in this case). The
private key (in the .private file) is used
to generate signatures, and the public key (in the .key file)
is used for signature verification.

To generate another key with the same properties (but with a different
key tag), repeat the above command.

The public keys should be inserted into the zone file by including the .key files
using $INCLUDE statements.

Signing the Zone

The dnssec-signzone program
is used to sign a zone.

Any keyset files corresponding to secure
subzones should be present. The zone signer will generate NSEC and RRSIG records
for the zone, as well as DS for the child
zones if '-d' is specified. If '-d' is
not specified, then DS RRsets for the secure child zones need to be added
manually.

The following command signs the zone, assuming it is in a file called zone.child.example.
By default, all zone keys which have an available private key are used
to generate signatures.

dnssec-signzone -o child.example zone.child.example

One output file is produced: zone.child.example.signed.
This file should be referenced by named.conf as
the input file for the zone.

dnssec-signzone will also
produce a keyset and dsset files and optionally a dlvset file. These are
used to provide the parent zone administators with the DNSKEYs (or
their corresponding DS records) that are the
secure entry point to the zone.

Configuring Servers

To enable named to respond
appropriately to DNS requests from DNSSEC aware clients, dnssec-enable must
be set to yes.

To enable named to validate
answers from other servers both dnssec-enable and dnssec-validate must
be set and some trusted-keys must
be configured into named.conf.

trusted-keys are copies
of DNSKEY RRs for zones that are used to form the first link in the cryptographic
chain of trust. All keys listed in trusted-keys (and
corresponding zones) are deemed to exist and only the listed keys will
be used to validated the DNSKEY RRset that they are from.

trusted-keys are described
in more detail later in this document.

Unlike BIND 8, BIND 9
does not verify signatures on load, so zone keys for authoritative zones
do not need to be specified in the configuration file.

After DNSSEC gets established, a typical DNSSEC configuration will look
something like the following. It has a one or more public keys for the
root. This allows answers from outside the organization to be validated.
It will also have several keys for parts of the namespace the organization
controls. These are here to ensure that named is immune to compromises
in the DNSSEC components of the security of parent zones.

trusted-keys {

        /* Root Key */
"." 257 3 3 "BNY4wrWM1nCfJ+CXd0rVXyYmobt7sEEfK3clRbGaTwSJxrGkxJWoZu6I7PzJu/
             E9gx4UC1zGAHlXKdE4zYIpRhaBKnvcC2U9mZhkdUpd1Vso/HAdjNe8LmMlnzY3
             zy2Xy4klWOADTPzSv9eamj8V18PHGjBLaVtYvk/ln5ZApjYghf+6fElrmLkdaz
             MQ2OCnACR817DF4BBa7UR/beDHyp5iWTXWSi6XmoJLbG9Scqc7l70KDqlvXR3M
             /lUUVRbkeg1IPJSidmK3ZyCllh4XSKbje/45SKucHgnwU5jefMtq66gKodQj+M
             iA21AfUVe7u99WzTLzY3qlxDhxYQQ20FQ97S+LKUTpQcq27R7AT3/V5hRQxScI
             Nqwcz4jYqZD2fQdgxbcDTClU0CRBdiieyLMNzXG3";

/* Key for our organization's forward zone */
example.com. 257 3 5 "AwEAAaxPMcR2x0HbQV4WeZB6oEDX+r0QM65KbhTjrW1ZaARmPhEZZe
                      3Y9ifgEuq7vZ/zGZUdEGNWy+JZzus0lUptwgjGwhUS1558Hb4JKUbb
                      OTcM8pwXlj0EiX3oDFVmjHO444gLkBO UKUf/mC7HvfwYH/Be22GnC
                      lrinKJp1Og4ywzO9WglMk7jbfW33gUKvirTHr25GL7STQUzBb5Usxt
                      8lgnyTUHs1t3JwCY5hKZ6CqFxmAVZP20igTixin/1LcrgX/KMEGd/b
                      iuvF4qJCyduieHukuY3H4XMAcR+xia2 nIUPvm/oyWR8BW/hWdzOvn
                      SCThlHf3xiYleDbt/o1OTQ09A0=";

/* Key for our reverse zone. */
2.0.192.IN-ADDRPA.NET. 257 3 5 "AQOnS4xn/IgOUpBPJ3bogzwcxOdNax071L18QqZnQQQA
                                VVr+iLhGTnNGp3HoWQLUIzKrJVZ3zggy3WwNT6kZo6c0
                                tszYqbtvchmgQC8CzKojM/W16i6MG/ea fGU3siaOdS0
                                yOI6BgPsw+YZdzlYMaIJGf4M4dyoKIhzdZyQ2bYQrjyQ
                                4LB0lC7aOnsMyYKHHYeRv PxjIQXmdqgOJGq+vsevG06
                                zW+1xgYJh9rCIfnm1GX/KMgxLPG2vXTD/RnLX+D3T3UL
                                7HJYHJhAZD5L59VvjSPsZJHeDCUyWYrvPZesZDIRvhDD
                                52SKvbheeTJUm6EhkzytNN2SN96QRk8j/iI8ib";
};

options {
        ...
        dnssec-enable yes;
        dnssec-validation yes;
};

Note

None of the keys listed in this example are valid. In particular, the root
key is not valid.

IPv6 Support
in BIND 9

BIND 9 fully supports all currently
defined forms of IPv6 name to address and address to name lookups. It will
also use IPv6 addresses to make queries when running on an IPv6 capable system.

For forward lookups, BIND 9 supports
only AAAA records. RFC 3363 deprecated the use of A6 records, and client-side
support for A6 records was accordingly removed from BIND 9.
However, authoritative BIND 9 name servers
still load zone files containing A6 records correctly, answer queries for
A6 records, and accept zone transfer for a zone containing A6 records.

For IPv6 reverse lookups, BIND 9 supports
the traditional "nibble" format used in the ip6.arpa domain,
as well as the older, deprecated ip6.int domain.
Older versions of BIND 9 supported the "binary
label" (also known as "bitstring") format, but support of binary labels has
been completely removed per RFC 3363. Many applications in BIND 9
do not understand the binary label format at all any more, and will return
an error if given. In particular, an authoritative BIND 9
name server will not load a zone file containing binary labels.

For an overview of the format and structure of IPv6 addresses, see the
section called “IPv6 addresses (AAAA)”
.

Address Lookups Using AAAA
Records

The IPv6 AAAA record is a parallel to the IPv4 A record, and, unlike
the deprecated A6 record, specifies the entire IPv6 address in a single
record. For example,

$ORIGIN example.com.
host            3600    IN      AAAA    2001:db8::1

Use of IPv4-in-IPv6 mapped addresses is not recommended. If a host has
an IPv4 address, use an A record, not a AAAA, with ::ffff:192.168.42.1 as
the address.

Address to Name Lookups
Using Nibble Format

When looking up an address in nibble format, the address components are
simply reversed, just as in IPv4, and ip6.arpa. is
appended to the resulting name. For example, the following would provide
reverse name lookup for a host with address 2001:db8::1.

$ORIGIN 0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.8.b.d.0.1.0.0.2.ip6.arpa.
1.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0   14400 IN      PTR     host.example.com.

Chapter 5. The BIND 9
Lightweight Resolver

The Lightweight
Resolver Library

Traditionally applications have been linked with a stub resolver library
that sends recursive DNS queries to a local caching name server.

IPv6 once introduced new complexity into the resolution process, such as
following A6 chains and DNAME records, and simultaneous lookup of IPv4 and
IPv6 addresses. Though most of the complexity was then removed, these are
hard or impossible to implement in a traditional stub resolver.

BIND 9 therefore can also provide resolution
services to local clients using a combination of a lightweight resolver library
and a resolver daemon process running on the local host. These communicate
using a simple UDP-based protocol, the "lightweight resolver protocol"
that is distinct from and simpler than the full DNS protocol.

Running a
Resolver Daemon

To use the lightweight resolver interface, the system must run the resolver
daemon lwresd or a local name
server configured with a lwres statement.

By default, applications using the lightweight resolver library will make
UDP requests to the IPv4 loopback address (127.0.0.1) on port 921. The address
can be overridden by lwserver lines
in /etc/resolv.conf.

The daemon currently only looks in the DNS, but in the future it may use
other sources such as /etc/hosts, NIS, etc.

The lwresd daemon is essentially
a caching-only name server that responds to requests using the lightweight
resolver protocol rather than the DNS protocol. Because it needs to run on
each host, it is designed to require no or minimal configuration. Unless
configured otherwise, it uses the name servers listed on nameserver lines
in /etc/resolv.conf as forwarders, but is also
capable of doing the resolution autonomously if none are specified.

The lwresd daemon may also
be configured with a named.conf style configuration
file, in /etc/lwresd.conf by default. A name
server may also be configured to act as a lightweight resolver daemon using
the lwres statement in named.conf.

Chapter 6. BIND 9
Configuration Reference

BIND 9 configuration is broadly similar
to BIND 8; however, there are a few new
areas of configuration, such as views. BIND 8
configuration files should work with few alterations in BIND 9,
although more complex configurations should be reviewed to check if they can
be more efficiently implemented using the new features found in BIND 9.

BIND 4 configuration files can be converted
to the new format using the shell script contrib/named-bootconf/named-bootconf.sh.

Configuration
File Elements

Following is a list of elements used throughout the BIND configuration
file documentation:



acl_name

The name of an address_match_list as
defined by the acl statement.

address_match_list

A list of one or more ip_addr, ip_prefix, key_id,
or acl_name elements, see the
section called “Address Match Lists”
.

masters_list

A named list of one or more ip_addr with
optional key_id and/or ip_port.
A masters_list may include other masters_lists.

domain_name

A quoted string which will be used as a DNS name, for example "my.test.domain".

dotted_decimal

One to four integers valued 0 through 255 separated by dots
(`.'), such as 123, 45.67 or 89.123.45.67.

ip4_addr

An IPv4 address with exactly four elements in dotted_decimal notation.

ip6_addr

An IPv6 address, such as 2001:db8::1234.
IPv6 scoped addresses that have ambiguity on their scope zones
must be disambiguated by an appropriate zone ID with the percent
character (`%') as delimiter. It is strongly recommended to use
string zone names rather than numeric identifiers, in order to
be robust against system configuration changes. However, since
there is no standard mapping for such names and identifier values,
currently only interface names as link identifiers are supported,
assuming one-to-one mapping between interfaces and links. For example,
a link-local address fe80::1 on
the link attached to the interface ne0 can
be specified as fe80::1%ne0.
Note that on most systems link-local addresses always have the
ambiguity, and need to be disambiguated.

ip_addr

An ip4_addr or ip6_addr.

ip_port

An IP port number. number is
limited to 0 through 65535, with values below 1024 typically restricted
to use by processes running as root. In some cases, an asterisk
(`*') character can be used as a placeholder to select a random
high-numbered port.

ip_prefix

An IP network specified as an ip_addr,
followed by a slash (`/') and then the number of bits in the netmask.
Trailing zeros in a ip_addr may omitted.
For example, 127/8 is
the network 127.0.0.0 with
netmask 255.0.0.0 and 1.2.3.0/28 is
network 1.2.3.0 with
netmask 255.255.255.240.

key_id

A domain_name representing the
name of a shared key, to be used for transaction security.

key_list

A list of one or more key_ids,
separated by semicolons and ending with a semicolon.

number

A non-negative 32-bit integer (i.e., a number between 0 and
4294967295, inclusive). Its acceptable value might further be limited
by the context in which it is used.

path_name

A quoted string which will be used as a pathname, such as zones/master/my.test.domain.

size_spec

A number, the word unlimited,
or the word default.

An unlimited size_spec requests
unlimited use, or the maximum available amount. A default
size_spec
uses the limit that was in force when the server
was started.

A number can optionally be followed
by a scaling factor: K or k for
kilobytes, M or m for
megabytes, and G or g for
gigabytes, which scale by 1024, 1024*1024, and 1024*1024*1024 respectively.

The value must be representable as a 64-bit unsigned integer
(0 to 18446744073709551615, inclusive). Using unlimited is
the best way to safely set a really large number.

yes_or_no

Either yes or no.
The words true and false are
also accepted, as are the numbers 1 and 0.

dialup_option

One of yes, no, notify, notify-passive, refresh or passive.
When used in a zone, notify-passive, refresh,
and passive are
restricted to slave and stub zones.

Address Match
Lists

Syntax

address_match_list = address_match_list_element ;
  [ address_match_list_element; ... ]
address_match_list_element = [ ! ] (ip_address [/length] |
   key key_id | acl_name | { address_match_list } )

Definition and Usage

Address match lists are primarily used to determine access control
for various server operations. They are also used in the listen-on and sortlist statements.
The elements which constitute an address match list can be any of the
following:

  • an IP address (IPv4 or IPv6)
  • an IP prefix (in `/' notation)
  • a key ID, as defined by the key statement
  • the name of an address match list defined with the acl statement
  • a nested address match list enclosed in braces

Elements can be negated with a leading exclamation mark (`!'), and
the match list names "any", "none", "localhost", and
"localnets"
are predefined. More information on those names can be found in the description
of the acl statement.

The addition of the key clause made the name of this syntactic element
something of a misnomer, since security keys can be used to validate
access without regard to a host or network address. Nonetheless, the
term "address match list" is still used throughout the documentation.

When a given IP address or prefix is compared to an address match list,
the list is traversed in order until an element matches. The interpretation
of a match depends on whether the list is being used for access control,
defining listen-on ports, or in a sortlist, and whether the element was
negated.

When used as an access control list, a non-negated match allows access
and a negated match denies access. If there is no match, access is denied.
The clauses allow-notify, allow-query, allow-query-cache, allow-transfer, allow-update, allow-update-forwarding,
and blackhole all use address
match lists. Similarly, the listen-on option will cause the server to
not accept queries on any of the machine's addresses which do not match
the list.

Because of the first-match aspect of the algorithm, an element that
defines a subset of another element in the list should come before the
broader element, regardless of whether either is negated. For example,
in 1.2.3/24; ! 1.2.3.13; the
1.2.3.13 element is completely useless because the algorithm will match
any lookup for 1.2.3.13 to the 1.2.3/24 element. Using !
1.2.3.13; 1.2.3/24
fixes that problem by having 1.2.3.13
blocked by the negation but all other 1.2.3.* hosts fall through.

Comment Syntax

The BIND 9 comment syntax allows for
comments to appear anywhere that white space may appear in a BIND configuration
file. To appeal to programmers of all kinds, they can be written in the
C, C++, or shell/perl style.

Syntax

/* This is a BIND comment as in C */

// This is a BIND comment as in C++

# This is a BIND comment as in common UNIX shells and perl

Definition and Usage

Comments may appear anywhere that white space may appear in a BIND configuration
file.

C-style comments start with the two characters /* (slash, star) and
end with */ (star, slash). Because they are completely delimited with
these characters, they can be used to comment only a portion of a line
or to span multiple lines.

C-style comments cannot be nested. For example, the following is not
valid because the entire comment ends with the first */:

/* This is the start of a comment.
   This is still part of the comment.
/* This is an incorrect attempt at nesting a comment. */
   This is no longer in any comment. */

C++-style comments start with the two characters // (slash, slash)
and continue to the end of the physical line. They cannot be continued
across multiple physical lines; to have one logical comment span multiple
lines, each line must use the // pair.

For example:

// This is the start of a comment.  The next line
// is a new comment, even though it is logically
// part of the previous comment.
          

Shell-style (or perl-style, if you prefer) comments start with the
character # (number sign) and continue to
the end of the physical line, as in C++ comments.

For example:

# This is the start of a comment.  The next line
# is a new comment, even though it is logically
# part of the previous comment.

Warning

You cannot use the semicolon (`;') character to start a comment such
as you would in a zone file. The semicolon indicates the end of a configuration
statement.

Configuration
File Grammar

A BIND 9 configuration consists of statements
and comments. Statements end with a semicolon. Statements and comments are
the only elements that can appear without enclosing braces. Many statements
contain a block of sub-statements, which are also terminated with a semicolon.

The following statements are supported:



acl

defines a named IP address matching list, for access control
and other uses.

controls

declares control channels to be used by the rndc utility.

include

includes a file.

key

specifies key information for use in authentication and authorization
using TSIG.

logging

specifies what the server logs, and where the log messages
are sent.

lwres

configures named to
also act as a light-weight resolver daemon (lwresd).

masters

defines a named masters list for inclusion in stub and slave
zone masters clauses.

options

controls global server configuration options and sets defaults
for other statements.

server

sets certain configuration options on a per-server basis.

trusted-keys

defines trusted DNSSEC keys.

view

defines a view.

zone

defines a zone.

The logging and options statements
may only occur once per configuration.

acl Statement
Grammar

acl acl-name {
    address_match_list
};

acl Statement
Definition and Usage

The acl statement assigns
a symbolic name to an address match list. It gets its name from a primary
use of address match lists: Access Control Lists (ACLs).

Note that an address match list's name must be defined with acl before
it can be used elsewhere; no forward references are allowed.

The following ACLs are built-in:



any

Matches all hosts.

none

Matches no hosts.

localhost

Matches the IPv4 and IPv6 addresses of all network interfaces
on the system.

localnets

Matches any host on an IPv4 or IPv6 network for which the
system has an interface. Some systems do not provide a way to
determine the prefix lengths of local IPv6 addresses. In such
a case, localnets only
matches the local IPv6 addresses, just like localhost.

controls Statement
Grammar

controls {
   [ inet ( ip_addr | * ) [ port ip_port ] allow {  address_match_list  }
                keys { key_list }; ]
   [ inet ...; ]
   [ unix path perm number owner number group number keys { key_list }; ]
   [ unix ...; ]
};

controls Statement
Definition and Usage

The controls statement
declares control channels to be used by system administrators to control
the operation of the name server. These control channels are used by the rndc utility
to send commands to and retrieve non-DNS results from a name server.

An inet control channel
is a TCP socket listening at the specified ip_port on
the specified ip_addr, which
can be an IPv4 or IPv6 address. An ip_addr of * (asterisk)
is interpreted as the IPv4 wildcard address; connections will be accepted
on any of the system's IPv4 addresses. To listen on the IPv6 wildcard address,
use an ip_addr of ::.
If you will only use rndc on
the local host, using the loopback address (127.0.0.1 or ::1)
is recommended for maximum security.

If no port is specified, port 953 is used. The asterisk
"*" cannot be used for ip_port.

The ability to issue commands over the control channel is restricted
by the allow and keys clauses.
Connections to the control channel are permitted based on the address_match_list.
This is for simple IP address based filtering only; any key_id elements
of the address_match_list are
ignored.

A unix control channel
is a UNIX domain socket listening at the specified path in the file system.
Access to the socket is specified by the perm, owner and group clauses.
Note on some platforms (SunOS and Solaris) the permissions (perm)
are applied to the parent directory as the permissions on the socket itself
are ignored.

The primary authorization mechanism of the command channel is the key_list,
which contains a list of key_ids.
Each key_id in the key_list is
authorized to execute commands over the control channel. See Remote
Name Daemon Control application
in the
section called “Administrative Tools”
) for information
about configuring keys in rndc.

If no controls statement
is present, named will set
up a default control channel listening on the loopback address 127.0.0.1
and its IPv6 counterpart ::1. In this case, and also when the controls statement
is present but does not have a keys clause, named will
attempt to load the command channel key from the file rndc.key in /etc (or
whatever sysconfdir was specified as when BIND was
built). To create a rndc.key file, run rndc-confgen
-a
.

The rndc.key feature was created to ease
the transition of systems from BIND 8,
which did not have digital signatures on its command channel messages and
thus did not have a keys clause.
It makes it possible to use an existing BIND 8
configuration file in BIND 9 unchanged,
and still have rndc work
the same way ndc worked in
BIND 8, simply by executing the command rndc-confgen
-a
after BIND 9 is installed.

Since the rndc.key feature is only intended
to allow the backward-compatible usage of BIND 8
configuration files, this feature does not have a high degree of configurability.
You cannot easily change the key name or the size of the secret, so you
should make a rndc.conf with your own key
if you wish to change those things. The rndc.key file
also has its permissions set such that only the owner of the file (the
user that named is running
as) can access it. If you desire greater flexibility in allowing other
users to access rndc commands,
then you need to create a rndc.conf file
and make it group readable by a group that contains the users who should
have access.

To disable the command channel, use an empty controls statement: controls
{ };
.

include Statement
Grammar

include filename;

include Statement
Definition and Usage

The include statement inserts
the specified file at the point where the include statement
is encountered. The include statement
facilitates the administration of configuration files by permitting the
reading or writing of some things but not others. For example, the statement
could include private keys that are readable only by the name server.

key Statement
Grammar

key key_id {
    algorithm string;
    secret string;
};

key Statement
Definition and Usage

The key statement defines
a shared secret key for use with TSIG (see the
section called “TSIG”
) or the command channel (see the section called “controls Statement
Definition and Usage”
).

The key statement can occur
at the top level of the configuration file or inside a view statement.
Keys defined in top-level key statements
can be used in all views. Keys intended for use in a controls statement
(see the section called “controls Statement
Definition and Usage”
) must be defined at the top level.

The key_id, also known as the
key name, is a domain name uniquely identifying the key. It can be used
in a server statement to
cause requests sent to that server to be signed with this key, or in address
match lists to verify that incoming requests have been signed with a key
matching this name, algorithm, and secret.

The algorithm_id is a string
that specifies a security/authentication algorithm. Named supports hmac-md5, hmac-sha1, hmac-sha224, hmac-sha256, hmac-sha384 and hmac-sha512 TSIG
authentication. Truncated hashes are supported by appending the minimum
number of required bits preceeded by a dash, e.g. hmac-sha1-80.
The secret_string is the secret
to be used by the algorithm, and is treated as a base-64 encoded string.

logging Statement
Grammar

logging {
   [ channel channel_name {
     ( file path name
         [ versions ( number | unlimited ) ]
         [ size size spec ]
       | syslog syslog_facility
       | stderr
       | null );
     [ severity (critical | error | warning | notice |
                 info | debug [ level ] | dynamic ); ]
     [ print-category yes or no; ]
     [ print-severity yes or no; ]
     [ print-time yes or no; ]
   }; ]
   [ category category_name {
     channel_name ; [ channel_name ; ... ]
   }; ]
   ...
};

logging Statement
Definition and Usage

The logging statement configures
a wide variety of logging options for the name server. Its channel phrase
associates output methods, format options and severity levels with a name
that can then be used with the category phrase
to select how various classes of messages are logged.

Only one logging statement
is used to define as many channels and categories as are wanted. If there
is no logging statement,
the logging configuration will be:

logging {
     category default { default_syslog; default_debug; };
     category unmatched { null; };
};

In BIND 9, the logging configuration
is only established when the entire configuration file has been parsed.
In BIND 8, it was established as soon
as the logging statement
was parsed. When the server is starting up, all logging messages regarding
syntax errors in the configuration file go to the default channels, or
to standard error if the "-g" option was specified.

The channel Phrase

All log output goes to one or more channels;
you can make as many of them as you want.

Every channel definition must include a destination clause that says
whether messages selected for the channel go to a file, to a particular
syslog facility, to the standard error stream, or are discarded. It can
optionally also limit the message severity level that will be accepted
by the channel (the default is info),
and whether to include a named-generated
time stamp, the category name and/or severity level (the default is not
to include any).

The null destination
clause causes all messages sent to the channel to be discarded; in that
case, other options for the channel are meaningless.

The file destination
clause directs the channel to a disk file. It can include limitations
both on how large the file is allowed to become, and how many versions
of the file will be saved each time the file is opened.

If you use the versions log
file option, then named will
retain that many backup versions of the file by renaming them when opening.
For example, if you choose to keep three old versions of the file lamers.log,
then just before it is opened lamers.log.1 is
renamed to lamers.log.2, lamers.log.0 is
renamed to lamers.log.1, and lamers.log is
renamed to lamers.log.0. You can say versions
unlimited
to not limit the number of versions. If a size option
is associated with the log file, then renaming is only done when the
file being opened exceeds the indicated size. No backup versions are
kept by default; any existing log file is simply appended.

The size option for files
is used to limit log growth. If the file ever exceeds the size, then named will
stop writing to the file unless it has a versions option
associated with it. If backup versions are kept, the files are rolled
as described above and a new one begun. If there is no versions option,
no more data will be written to the log until some out-of-band mechanism
removes or truncates the log to less than the maximum size. The default
behavior is not to limit the size of the file.

Example usage of the size and versions options:

channel an_example_channel {
    file "example.log" versions 3 size 20m;
    print-time yes;
    print-category yes;
};

The syslog destination
clause directs the channel to the system log. Its argument is a syslog
facility as described in the syslog man
page. Known facilities are kern, user, mail, daemon, auth, syslog, lpr, news, uucp, cron, authpriv, ftp, local0, local1, local2, local3, local4, local5, local6 and local7,
however not all facilities are supported on all operating systems. How syslog will
handle messages sent to this facility is described in the syslog.conf man
page. If you have a system which uses a very old version of syslog that
only uses two arguments to the openlog() function,
then this clause is silently ignored.

The severity clause works
like syslog's
"priorities", except that they can also be used if you are writing straight
to a file rather than using syslog.
Messages which are not at least of the severity level given will not
be selected for the channel; messages of higher severity levels will
be accepted.

If you are using syslog,
then the syslog.conf priorities
will also determine what eventually passes through. For example, defining
a channel facility and severity as daemon and debug but
only logging daemon.warning via syslog.conf will
cause messages of severity info and notice to
be dropped. If the situation were reversed, with named writing
messages of only warning or
higher, then syslogd would
print all messages it received from the channel.

The stderr destination
clause directs the channel to the server's standard error stream. This
is intended for use when the server is running as a foreground process,
for example when debugging a configuration.

The server can supply extensive debugging information when it is in
debugging mode. If the server's global debug level is greater than zero,
then debugging mode will be active. The global debug level is set either
by starting the named server
with the -d flag followed by a positive integer,
or by running rndc trace.
The global debug level can be set to zero, and debugging mode turned
off, by running rndc notrace.
All debugging messages in the server have a debug level, and higher debug
levels give more detailed output. Channels that specify a specific debug
severity, for example:

channel specific_debug_level {
    file "foo";
    severity debug 3;
};

will get debugging output of level 3 or less any time the server is
in debugging mode, regardless of the global debugging level. Channels
with dynamic severity use
the server's global debug level to determine what messages to print.

If print-time has been
turned on, then the date and time will be logged. print-time may
be specified for a syslog channel,
but is usually pointless since syslog also
prints the date and time. If print-category is
requested, then the category of the message will be logged as well. Finally,
if print-severity is on,
then the severity level of the message will be logged. The print- options
may be used in any combination, and will always be printed in the following
order: time, category, severity. Here is an example where all three print- options
are on:

28-Feb-2000 15:05:32.863 general: notice:
running

There are four predefined channels that are used for named's
default logging as follows. How they are used is described in the
section called “The category Phrase”
.

channel default_syslog {
    syslog daemon;                      // send to syslog's daemon
                                        // facility
    severity info;                      // only send priority info
                                        // and higher
};

channel default_debug {
    file "named.run";                   // write to named.run in
                                        // the working directory
                                        // Note: stderr is used instead
                                        // of "named.run"
                                        // if the server is started
                                        // with the '-f' option.
    severity dynamic;                   // log at the server's
                                        // current debug level
};

channel default_stderr {
    stderr;                             // writes to stderr
    severity info;                      // only send priority info
                                        // and higher
};

channel null {
   null;                                // toss anything sent to
                                        // this channel
};

The default_debug channel
has the special property that it only produces output when the server's
debug level is nonzero. It normally writes to a file called named.run in
the server's working directory.

For security reasons, when the "-u"
command line option is used, the named.run file
is created only after named has
changed to the new UID, and any debug output generated while named is
starting up and still running as root is discarded. If you need to capture
this output, you must run the server with the "-g"
option and redirect standard error to a file.

Once a channel is defined, it cannot be redefined. Thus you cannot
alter the built-in channels directly, but you can modify the default
logging by pointing categories at channels you have defined.

The category Phrase

There are many categories, so you can send the logs you want to see
wherever you want, without seeing logs you don't want. If you don't specify
a list of channels for a category, then log messages in that category
will be sent to the default category
instead. If you don't specify a default category, the following
"default default" is used:

category default { default_syslog; default_debug; };

As an example, let's say you want to log security events to a file,
but you also want keep the default logging behavior. You'd specify the
following:

channel my_security_channel {
    file "my_security_file";
    severity info;
};
category security {
    my_security_channel;
    default_syslog;
    default_debug;
};

To discard all messages in a category, specify the null channel:

category xfer-out { null; };
category notify { null; };

Following are the available categories and brief descriptions of the
types of log information they contain. More categories may be added in
future BIND releases.



default

The default category defines the logging options for those
categories where no specific configuration has been defined.

general

The catch-all. Many things still aren't classified into
categories, and they all end up here.

database

Messages relating to the databases used internally by the
name server to store zone and cache data.

security

Approval and denial of requests.

config

Configuration file parsing and processing.

resolver

DNS resolution, such as the recursive lookups performed
on behalf of clients by a caching name server.

xfer-in

Zone transfers the server is receiving.

xfer-out

Zone transfers the server is sending.

notify

The NOTIFY protocol.

client

Processing of client requests.

unmatched

Messages that named was unable to determine the class of
or for which there was no matching view.
A one line summary is also logged to the client category.
This category is best sent to a file or stderr, by default
it is sent to the null channel.

network

Network operations.

update

Dynamic updates.

update-security

Approval and denial of update requests.

queries

Specify where queries should be logged to.

At startup, specifying the category queries will
also enable query logging unless querylog option
has been specified.

The query log entry reports the client's IP address and port
number, and the query name, class and type. It also reports
whether the Recursion Desired flag was set (+ if set, - if
not set), EDNS was in use (E) or if the query was signed (S).

client 127.0.0.1#62536: query:
www.example.com IN AAAA +SE

client ::1#62537: query: www.example.net
IN AAAA -SE

dispatch

Dispatching of incoming packets to the server modules where
they are to be processed.

dnssec

DNSSEC and TSIG protocol processing.

lame-servers

Lame servers. These are misconfigurations in remote servers,
discovered by BIND 9 when trying to query those servers during
resolution.

delegation-only

Delegation only. Logs queries that have have been forced
to NXDOMAIN as the result of a delegation-only zone or a delegation-only in
a hint or stub zone declaration.

lwres Statement
Grammar

This is the grammar of the lwres statement
in the named.conf file:

lwres {
    [ listen-on { ip_addr [port ip_port] ; [ ip_addr [port ip_port] ; ... ] }; ]
    [ view view_name; ]
    [ search { domain_name ; [ domain_name ; ... ] }; ]
    [ ndots number; ]
};

lwres Statement
Definition and Usage

The lwres statement configures
the name server to also act as a lightweight resolver server. (See the
section called “Running a Resolver Daemon”
.) There may
be be multiple lwres statements
configuring lightweight resolver servers with different properties.

The listen-on statement
specifies a list of addresses (and ports) that this instance of a lightweight
resolver daemon should accept requests on. If no port is specified, port
921 is used. If this statement is omitted, requests will be accepted on
127.0.0.1, port 921.

The view statement binds
this instance of a lightweight resolver daemon to a view in the DNS namespace,
so that the response will be constructed in the same manner as a normal
DNS query matching this view. If this statement is omitted, the default
view is used, and if there is no default view, an error is triggered.

The search statement is
equivalent to the search statement
in /etc/resolv.conf. It provides a list of
domains which are appended to relative names in queries.

The ndots statement is
equivalent to the ndots statement
in /etc/resolv.conf. It indicates the minimum
number of dots in a relative domain name that should result in an exact
match lookup before search path elements are appended.

masters Statement
Grammar

masters name [port ip_port] { ( masters_list | ip_addr [port ip_port] [key key] ) ; [...] };

masters Statement
Definition and Usage

masters lists allow for
a common set of masters to be easily used by multiple stub and slave zones.

options Statement
Grammar

This is the grammar of the options statement
in the named.conf file:

options {
    [ version version_string; ]
    [ hostname hostname_string; ]
    [ server-id server_id_string; ]
    [ directory path_name; ]
    [ key-directory path_name; ]
    [ named-xfer path_name; ]
    [ tkey-domain domainname; ]
    [ tkey-dhkey key_name key_tag; ]
    [ cache-file path_name; ]
    [ dump-file path_name; ]
    [ memstatistics-file path_name; ]
    [ pid-file path_name; ]
    [ statistics-file path_name; ]
    [ zone-statistics yes_or_no; ]
    [ auth-nxdomain yes_or_no; ]
    [ deallocate-on-exit yes_or_no; ]
    [ dialup dialup_option; ]
    [ fake-iquery yes_or_no; ]
    [ fetch-glue yes_or_no; ]
    [ flush-zones-on-shutdown yes_or_no; ]
    [ has-old-clients yes_or_no; ]
    [ host-statistics yes_or_no; ]
    [ host-statistics-max number; ]
    [ minimal-responses yes_or_no; ]
    [ multiple-cnames yes_or_no; ]
    [ notify yes_or_no | explicit | master-only; ]
    [ recursion yes_or_no; ]
    [ rfc2308-type1 yes_or_no; ]
    [ use-id-pool yes_or_no; ]
    [ maintain-ixfr-base yes_or_no; ]
    [ dnssec-enable yes_or_no; ]
    [ dnssec-validation yes_or_no; ]
    [ dnssec-lookaside domain trust-anchor domain; ]
    [ dnssec-must-be-secure domain yes_or_no; ]
    [ dnssec-accept-expired yes_or_no; ]
    [ forward ( only | first ); ]
    [ forwarders { [ ip_addr [port ip_port] ; ... ] }; ]
    [ dual-stack-servers [port ip_port] {
        ( domain_name [port ip_port] |
          ip_addr [port ip_port] ) ; 
        ... }; ]
    [ check-names ( master | slave | response )
        ( warn | fail | ignore ); ]
    [ check-mx ( warn | fail | ignore ); ]
    [ check-wildcard yes_or_no; ]
    [ check-integrity yes_or_no; ]
    [ check-mx-cname ( warn | fail | ignore ); ]
    [ check-srv-cname ( warn | fail | ignore ); ]
    [ check-sibling yes_or_no; ]
    [ allow-notify { address_match_list }; ]
    [ allow-query { address_match_list }; ]
    [ allow-query-cache { address_match_list }; ]
    [ allow-transfer { address_match_list }; ]
    [ allow-recursion { address_match_list }; ]
    [ allow-update { address_match_list }; ]
    [ allow-update-forwarding { address_match_list }; ]
    [ update-check-ksk yes_or_no; ]
    [ allow-v6-synthesis { address_match_list }; ]
    [ blackhole { address_match_list }; ]
    [ avoid-v4-udp-ports { port_list }; ]
    [ avoid-v6-udp-ports { port_list }; ]
    [ listen-on [ port ip_port ] { address_match_list }; ]
    [ listen-on-v6 [ port ip_port ] { address_match_list }; ]
    [ query-source ( ( ip4_addr | * )
        [ port ( ip_port | * ) ] |
        [ address ( ip4_addr | * ) ]
        [ port ( ip_port | * ) ] ) ; ]
    [ query-source-v6 ( ( ip6_addr | * )
        [ port ( ip_port | * ) ] | 
        [ address ( ip6_addr | * ) ] 
        [ port ( ip_port | * ) ] ) ; ]
    [ max-transfer-time-in number; ]
    [ max-transfer-time-out number; ]
    [ max-transfer-idle-in number; ]
    [ max-transfer-idle-out number; ]
    [ tcp-clients number; ]
    [ recursive-clients number; ]
    [ serial-query-rate number; ]
    [ serial-queries number; ]
    [ tcp-listen-queue number; ]
    [ transfer-format ( one-answer | many-answers ); ]
    [ transfers-in  number; ]
    [ transfers-out number; ]
    [ transfers-per-ns number; ]
    [ transfer-source (ip4_addr | *) [port ip_port] ; ]
    [ transfer-source-v6 (ip6_addr | *) [port ip_port] ; ]
    [ alt-transfer-source (ip4_addr | *) [port ip_port] ; ]
    [ alt-transfer-source-v6 (ip6_addr | *) [port ip_port] ; ]
    [ use-alt-transfer-source yes_or_no; ]
    [ notify-source (ip4_addr | *) [port ip_port] ; ]
    [ notify-source-v6 (ip6_addr | *) [port ip_port] ; ]
    [ also-notify { ip_addr [port ip_port] ; [ ip_addr [port ip_port] ; ... ] }; ]
    [ max-ixfr-log-size number; ]
    [ max-journal-size size_spec; ]
    [ coresize size_spec ; ]
    [ datasize size_spec ; ]
    [ files size_spec ; ]
    [ stacksize size_spec ; ]
    [ cleaning-interval number; ]
    [ heartbeat-interval number; ]
    [ interface-interval number; ]
    [ statistics-interval number; ]
    [ topology { address_match_list }];
    [ sortlist { address_match_list }];
    [ rrset-order { order_spec ; [ order_spec ; ... ] ] };
    [ lame-ttl number; ]
    [ max-ncache-ttl number; ]
    [ max-cache-ttl number; ]
    [ sig-validity-interval number ; ]
    [ min-roots number; ]
    [ use-ixfr yes_or_no ; ]
    [ provide-ixfr yes_or_no; ]
    [ request-ixfr yes_or_no; ]
    [ treat-cr-as-space yes_or_no ; ]
    [ min-refresh-time number ; ]
    [ max-refresh-time number ; ]
    [ min-retry-time number ; ]
    [ max-retry-time number ; ]
    [ port ip_port; ]
    [ additional-from-auth yes_or_no ; ]
    [ additional-from-cache yes_or_no ; ]
    [ random-device path_name ; ]
    [ max-cache-size size_spec ; ]
    [ match-mapped-addresses yes_or_no; ]
    [ preferred-glue ( A | AAAA | NONE ); ]
    [ edns-udp-size number; ]
    [ max-udp-size number; ]
    [ root-delegation-only [ exclude { namelist } ] ; ]
    [ querylog yes_or_no ; ]
    [ disable-algorithms domain { algorithm; [ algorithm; ] }; ]
    [ acache-enable yes_or_no ; ]
    [ acache-cleaning-interval number; ]
    [ max-acache-size size_spec ; ]
    [ clients-per-query number ; ]
    [ max-clients-per-query number ; ]
    [ masterfile-format (text|raw) ; ]
    [ empty-server name ; ]
    [ empty-contact name ; ]
    [ empty-zones-enable yes_or_no ; ]
    [ disable-empty-zone zone_name ; ]
    [ zero-no-soa-ttl yes_or_no ; ]
    [ zero-no-soa-ttl-cache yes_or_no ; ]
};

options Statement
Definition and Usage

The options statement sets
up global options to be used by BIND.
This statement may appear only once in a configuration file. If there is
no options statement, an
options block with each option set to its default will be used.

directory

The working directory of the server. Any non-absolute pathnames
in the configuration file will be taken as relative to this directory.
The default location for most server output files (e.g. named.run)
is this directory. If a directory is not specified, the working directory
defaults to `.', the directory from
which the server was started. The directory specified should be an
absolute path.

key-directory

When performing dynamic update of secure zones, the directory where
the public and private key files should be found, if different than
the current working directory. The directory specified must be an
absolute path.

named-xfer

This option is obsolete. It
was used in BIND 8 to specify
the pathname to the named-xfer program.
In BIND 9, no separate named-xfer program
is needed; its functionality is built into the name server.

tkey-domain

The domain appended to the names of all shared keys generated with TKEY.
When a client requests a TKEY exchange,
it may or may not specify the desired name for the key. If present,
the name of the shared key will be "client
specified part
" +
"tkey-domain". Otherwise, the name of
the shared key will be "random hex digits" + "tkey-domain".
In most cases, the domainname should
be the server's domain name.

tkey-dhkey

The Diffie-Hellman key used by the server to generate shared keys
with clients using the Diffie-Hellman mode of TKEY.
The server must be able to load the public and private keys from
files in the working directory. In most cases, the keyname should
be the server's host name.

cache-file

This is for testing only. Do not use.

dump-file

The pathname of the file the server dumps the database to when
instructed to do so with rndc dumpdb.
If not specified, the default is named_dump.db.

memstatistics-file

The pathname of the file the server writes memory usage statistics
to on exit. If not specified, the default is named.memstats.

pid-file

The pathname of the file the server writes its process ID in. If
not specified, the default is /var/run/named.pid.
The pid-file is used by programs that want to send signals to the
running name server. Specifying pid-file
none
disables the use of a PID file — no file
will be written and any existing one will be removed. Note that none is
a keyword, not a file name, and therefore is not enclosed in double
quotes.

statistics-file

The pathname of the file the server appends statistics to when
instructed to do so using rndc stats.
If not specified, the default is named.stats in
the server's current directory. The format of the file is described
in the section called “The
Statistics File”
.

port

The UDP/TCP port number the server uses for receiving and sending
DNS protocol traffic. The default is 53. This option is mainly intended
for server testing; a server using a port other than 53 will not
be able to communicate with the global DNS.

random-device

The source of entropy to be used by the server. Entropy is primarily
needed for DNSSEC operations, such as TKEY transactions and dynamic
update of signed zones. This options specifies the device (or file)
from which to read entropy. If this is a file, operations requiring
entropy will fail when the file has been exhausted. If not specified,
the default value is /dev/random (or
equivalent) when present, and none otherwise. The random-device option
takes effect during the initial configuration load at server startup
time and is ignored on subsequent reloads.

preferred-glue

If specified, the listed type (A or AAAA) will be emitted before
other glue in the additional section of a query response. The default
is not to prefer any type (NONE).

root-delegation-only

Turn on enforcement of delegation-only in TLDs (top level domains)
and root zones with an optional exclude list.

Note some TLDs are not delegation only (e.g. "DE", "LV", "US"
and "MUSEUM").

options {
        root-delegation-only exclude { "de"; "lv"; "us"; "museum"; };
};
disable-algorithms

Disable the specified DNSSEC algorithms at and below the specified
name. Multiple disable-algorithms statements
are allowed. Only the most specific will be applied.

dnssec-lookaside

When set, dnssec-lookaside provides
the validator with an alternate method to validate DNSKEY records
at the top of a zone. When a DNSKEY is at or below a domain specified
by the deepest dnssec-lookaside,
and the normal dnssec validation has left the key untrusted, the
trust-anchor will be append to the key name and a DLV record will
be looked up to see if it can validate the key. If the DLV record
validates a DNSKEY (similarly to the way a DS record does) the DNSKEY
RRset is deemed to be trusted.

dnssec-must-be-secure

Specify hierarchies which must be or may not be secure (signed
and validated). If yes,
then named will only accept answers if they are secure. If no,
then normal dnssec validation applies allowing for insecure answers
to be accepted. The specified domain must be under a trusted-key or dnssec-lookaside must
be active.

Boolean Options

auth-nxdomain

If yes, then
the AA bit is always
set on NXDOMAIN responses, even if the server is not actually authoritative.
The default is no;
this is a change from BIND 8.
If you are using very old DNS software, you may need to set it
to yes.

deallocate-on-exit

This option was used in BIND 8
to enable checking for memory leaks on exit. BIND 9
ignores the option and always performs the checks.

dialup

If yes, then
the server treats all zones as if they are doing zone transfers
across a dial-on-demand dialup link, which can be brought up by
traffic originating from this server. This has different effects
according to zone type and concentrates the zone maintenance so
that it all happens in a short interval, once every heartbeat-interval and
hopefully during the one call. It also suppresses some of the normal
zone maintenance traffic. The default is no.

The dialup option
may also be specified in the view and zone statements,
in which case it overrides the global dialup option.

If the zone is a master zone, then the server will send out a
NOTIFY request to all the slaves (default). This should trigger
the zone serial number check in the slave (providing it supports
NOTIFY) allowing the slave to verify the zone while the connection
is active. The set of servers to which NOTIFY is sent can be controlled
by notify and also-notify.

If the zone is a slave or stub zone, then the server will suppress
the regular
"zone up to date" (refresh) queries and only perform them when
the heartbeat-interval expires
in addition to sending NOTIFY requests.

Finer control can be achieved by using notify which
only sends NOTIFY messages, notify-passive which
sends NOTIFY messages and suppresses the normal refresh queries, refresh which
suppresses normal refresh processing and sends refresh queries
when the heartbeat-interval expires,
and passive which
just disables normal refresh processing.





dialup mode

normal refresh

heart-beat refresh

heart-beat notify

no (default)

yes

no

no

yes

no

yes

yes

notify

yes

no

yes

refresh

no

yes

no

passive

no

no

no

notify-passive

no

no

yes

Note that normal NOTIFY processing is not affected by dialup.

fake-iquery

In BIND 8, this option enabled
simulating the obsolete DNS query type IQUERY. BIND 9
never does IQUERY simulation.

fetch-glue

This option is obsolete. In BIND 8, fetch-glue
yes
caused the server to attempt to fetch glue
resource records it didn't have when constructing the additional
data section of a response. This is now considered a bad idea
and BIND 9 never does it.

flush-zones-on-shutdown

When the nameserver exits due receiving SIGTERM, flush or do
not flush any pending zone writes. The default is flush-zones-on-shutdown no.

has-old-clients

This option was incorrectly implemented in BIND 8,
and is ignored by BIND 9. To
achieve the intended effect of has-old-clients yes,
specify the two separate options auth-nxdomain yes and rfc2308-type1 no instead.

host-statistics

In BIND 8, this enables keeping of statistics for every host
that the name server interacts with. Not implemented in BIND 9.

maintain-ixfr-base

This option is obsolete.
It was used in BIND 8 to determine
whether a transaction log was kept for Incremental Zone Transfer. BIND 9
maintains a transaction log whenever possible. If you need to disable
outgoing incremental zone transfers, use provide-ixfr no.

minimal-responses

If yes, then
when generating responses the server will only add records to the
authority and additional data sections when they are required (e.g.
delegations, negative responses). This may improve the performance
of the server. The default is no.

multiple-cnames

This option was used in BIND 8
to allow a domain name to have multiple CNAME records in violation
of the DNS standards. BIND 9.2
onwards always strictly enforces the CNAME rules both in master
files and dynamic updates.

notify

If yes (the default),
DNS NOTIFY messages are sent when a zone the server is authoritative
for changes, see the section called “Notify”.
The messages are sent to the servers listed in the zone's NS records
(except the master server identified in the SOA MNAME field), and
to any servers listed in the also-notify option.

If master-only,
notifies are only sent for master zones. If explicit,
notifies are sent only to servers explicitly listed using also-notify.
If no, no notifies
are sent.

The notify option
may also be specified in the zone statement,
in which case it overrides the options
notify
statement. It would only be necessary to
turn off this option if it caused slaves to crash.

recursion

If yes, and a
DNS query requests recursion, then the server will attempt to do
all the work required to answer the query. If recursion is off
and the server does not already know the answer, it will return
a referral response. The default is yes.
Note that setting recursion no does
not prevent clients from getting data from the server's cache;
it only prevents new data from being cached as an effect of client
queries. Caching may still occur as an effect the server's internal
operation, such as NOTIFY address lookups. See also fetch-glue above.

rfc2308-type1

Setting this to yes will
cause the server to send NS records along with the SOA record for
negative answers. The default is no.

Note

Not yet implemented in BIND 9.

use-id-pool

This option is obsolete. BIND 9
always allocates query IDs from a pool.

zone-statistics

If yes, the server
will collect statistical data on all zones (unless specifically
turned off on a per-zone basis by specifying zone-statistics
no
in the zone statement).
These statistics may be accessed using rndc
stats
, which will dump them to the file listed
in the statistics-file.
See also the section
called “The Statistics File”
.

use-ixfr

This option is obsolete.
If you need to disable IXFR to a particular server or servers see
the information on the provide-ixfr option
in the section called “server Statement
Definition and Usage”
. See also the
section called “Incremental Zone Transfers (IXFR)”
.

provide-ixfr

See the description of provide-ixfr in the section called “server Statement
Definition and Usage”
.

request-ixfr

See the description of request-ixfr in the section called “server Statement
Definition and Usage”
.

treat-cr-as-space

This option was used in BIND 8
to make the server treat carriage return ("\r")
characters the same way as a space or tab character, to facilitate
loading of zone files on a UNIX system that were generated on an
NT or DOS machine. In BIND 9,
both UNIX "\n"
and NT/DOS "\r\n" newlines
are always accepted, and the option is ignored.

additional-from-auth, additional-from-cache

These options control the behavior of an authoritative server
when answering queries which have additional data, or when following
CNAME and DNAME chains.

When both of these options are set to yes (the
default) and a query is being answered from authoritative data
(a zone configured into the server), the additional data section
of the reply will be filled in using data from other authoritative
zones and from the cache. In some situations this is undesirable,
such as when there is concern over the correctness of the cache,
or in servers where slave zones may be added and modified by untrusted
third parties. Also, avoiding the search for this additional data
will speed up server operations at the possible expense of additional
queries to resolve what would otherwise be provided in the additional
section.

For example, if a query asks for an MX record for host foo.example.com,
and the record found is "MX 10 mail.example.net",
normally the address records (A and AAAA) for mail.example.net will
be provided as well, if known, even though they are not in the
example.com zone. Setting these options to no disables
this behavior and makes the server only search for additional data
in the zone it answers from.

These options are intended for use in authoritative-only servers,
or in authoritative-only views. Attempts to set them to no without
also specifying recursion no will
cause the server to ignore the options and log a warning message.

Specifying additional-from-cache
no
actually disables the use of the cache not
only for additional data lookups but also when looking up the
answer. This is usually the desired behavior in an authoritative-only
server where the correctness of the cached data is an issue.

When a name server is non-recursively queried for a name that
is not below the apex of any served zone, it normally answers with
an
"upwards referral" to the root servers or the servers of some other
known parent of the query name. Since the data in an upwards referral
comes from the cache, the server will not be able to provide upwards
referrals when additional-from-cache
no
has been specified. Instead, it will respond
to such queries with REFUSED. This should not cause any problems
since upwards referrals are not required for the resolution process.

match-mapped-addresses

If yes, then
an IPv4-mapped IPv6 address will match any address match list entries
that match the corresponding IPv4 address. Enabling this option
is sometimes useful on IPv6-enabled Linux systems, to work around
a kernel quirk that causes IPv4 TCP connections such as zone transfers
to be accepted on an IPv6 socket using mapped addresses, causing
address match lists designed for IPv4 to fail to match. The use
of this option for any other purpose is discouraged.

ixfr-from-differences

When yes and
the server loads a new version of a master zone from its zone file
or receives a new version of a slave file by a non-incremental
zone transfer, it will compare the new version to the previous
one and calculate a set of differences. The differences are then
logged in the zone's journal file such that the changes can be
transmitted to downstream slaves as an incremental zone transfer.

By allowing incremental zone transfers to be used for non-dynamic
zones, this option saves bandwidth at the expense of increased
CPU and memory consumption at the master. In particular, if the
new version of a zone is completely different from the previous
one, the set of differences will be of a size comparable to the
combined size of the old and new zone version, and the server will
need to temporarily allocate memory to hold this complete difference
set.

ixfr-from-differences also
accepts master and slave at
the view and options levels which causes ixfr-from-differences to
apply to all master or slave zones
respectively.

multi-master

This should be set when you have multiple masters for a zone
and the addresses refer to different machines. If yes,
named will not log when the serial number on the master is less
than what named currently has. The default is no.

dnssec-enable

Enable DNSSEC support in named. Unless set to yes,
named behaves as if it does not support DNSSEC. The default is yes.

dnssec-validation

Enable DNSSEC validation in named. Note dnssec-enable also
needs to be set to yes to
be effective. The default is no.

dnssec-accept-expired

Accept expired signatures when verifying DNSSEC signatures. The
default is no.

querylog

Specify whether query logging should be started when named starts.
If querylog is not
specified, then the query logging is determined by the presence
of the logging category queries.

check-names

This option is used to restrict the character set and syntax
of certain domain names in master files and/or DNS responses received
from the network. The default varies according to usage area. For master zones
the default is fail.
For slave zones the
default is warn.
For answers received from the network (response)
the default is ignore.

The rules for legal hostnames and mail domains are derived from
RFC 952 and RFC 821 as modified by RFC 1123.

check-names applies
to the owner names of A, AAA and MX records. It also applies to
the domain names in the RDATA of NS, SOA and MX records. It also
applies to the RDATA of PTR records where the owner name indicated
that it is a reverse lookup of a hostname (the owner name ends
in IN-ADDR.ARPA, IP6.ARPA or IP6.INT).

check-mx

Check whether the MX record appears to refer to a IP address.
The default is to warn.
Other possible values are fail and ignore.

check-wildcard

This option is used to check for non-terminal wildcards. The
use of non-terminal wildcards is almost always as a result of a
failure to understand the wildcard matching algorithm (RFC 1034).
This option affects master zones. The default (yes)
is to check for non-terminal wildcards and issue a warning.

check-integrity

Perform post load zone integrity checks on master zones. This
checks that MX and SRV records refer to address (A or AAAA) records
and that glue address records exist for delegated zones. For MX
and SRV records only in-zone hostnames are checked (for out-of-zone
hostnames use named-checkzone). For NS records only names below
top of zone are checked (for out-of-zone names and glue consistancy
checks use named-checkzone). The default is yes.

check-mx-cname

If check-integrity is
set then fail, warn or ignore MX records that refer to CNAMES.
The default is to warn.

check-srv-cname

If check-integrity is
set then fail, warn or ignore SRV records that refer to CNAMES.
The default is to warn.

check-sibling

When performing integrity checks, also check that sibling glue
exists. The default is yes.

zero-no-soa-ttl

When returning authoritative negative responses to SOA queries
set the TTL of the SOA recored returned in the authority section
to zero. The default is yes.

zero-no-soa-ttl-cache

When caching a negative response to a SOA query set the TTL to
zero. The default is no.

update-check-ksk

When regenerating the RRSIGs following a UPDATE request to a
secure zone, check the KSK flag on the DNSKEY RR to determine if
this key should be used to generate the RRSIG. This flag is ignored
if there are not DNSKEY RRs both with and without a KSK. The default
is yes.

Forwarding

The forwarding facility can be used to create a large site-wide cache
on a few servers, reducing traffic over links to external name servers.
It can also be used to allow queries by servers that do not have direct
access to the Internet, but wish to look up exterior names anyway. Forwarding
occurs only on those queries for which the server is not authoritative
and does not have the answer in its cache.

forward

This option is only meaningful if the forwarders list is not
empty. A value of first, the default,
causes the server to query the forwarders first — and if
that doesn't answer the question, the server will then look for
the answer itself. If only is specified,
the server will only query the forwarders.

forwarders

Specifies the IP addresses to be used for forwarding. The default
is the empty list (no forwarding).

Forwarding can also be configured on a per-domain basis, allowing for
the global forwarding options to be overridden in a variety of ways.
You can set particular domains to use different forwarders, or have a
different forward only/first behavior,
or not forward at all, see the section called “zone Statement
Grammar”
.

Dual-stack Servers

Dual-stack servers are used as servers of last resort to work around
problems in reachability due the lack of support for either IPv4 or IPv6
on the host machine.

dual-stack-servers

Specifies host names or addresses of machines with access to
both IPv4 and IPv6 transports. If a hostname is used, the server
must be able to resolve the name using only the transport it has.
If the machine is dual stacked, then the dual-stack-servers have
no effect unless access to a transport has been disabled on the
command line (e.g. named -4).

Access Control

Access to the server can be restricted based on the IP address of the
requesting system. See the
section called “Address Match Lists”
for details on how
to specify IP address lists.

allow-notify

Specifies which hosts are allowed to notify this server, a slave,
of zone changes in addition to the zone masters. allow-notify may
also be specified in the zone statement,
in which case it overrides the options
allow-notify
statement. It is only meaningful for
a slave zone. If not specified, the default is to process notify
messages only from a zone's master.

allow-query

Specifies which hosts are allowed to ask ordinary DNS questions. allow-query may
also be specified in the zone statement,
in which case it overrides the options
allow-query
statement. If not specified, the default
is to allow queries from all hosts.

Note

allow-query-cache is
now used to specify access to the cache.

allow-query-cache

Specifies which hosts are allowed to get answers from the cache.
If allow-query-cache is
not set then allow-recursion is
used if set, otherwise allow-query is
used if set, otherwise the default (localnets; localhost;)
is used.

allow-recursion

Specifies which hosts are allowed to make recursive queries through
this server. If allow-recursion is
not set then allow-query-cache is
used if set, otherwise allow-query is
used if set, otherwise the default (localnets; localhost;)
is used.

allow-update

Specifies which hosts are allowed to submit Dynamic DNS updates
for master zones. The default is to deny updates from all hosts.
Note that allowing updates based on the requestor's IP address
is insecure; see the
section called “Dynamic Update Security”
for details.

allow-update-forwarding

Specifies which hosts are allowed to submit Dynamic DNS updates
to slave zones to be forwarded to the master. The default is {
none; }
, which means that no update forwarding
will be performed. To enable update forwarding, specify allow-update-forwarding
{ any; };
. Specifying values other than {
none; }
or { any;
}
is usually counterproductive, since the responsibility
for update access control should rest with the master server, not
the slaves.

Note that enabling the update forwarding feature on a slave server
may expose master servers relying on insecure IP address based
access control to attacks; see the
section called “Dynamic Update Security”
for more
details.

allow-v6-synthesis

This option was introduced for the smooth transition from AAAA
to A6 and from "nibble labels" to binary labels. However, since
both A6 and binary labels were then deprecated, this option was
also deprecated. It is now ignored with some warning messages.

allow-transfer

Specifies which hosts are allowed to receive zone transfers from
the server. allow-transfer may
also be specified in the zone statement,
in which case it overrides the options
allow-transfer
statement. If not specified, the
default is to allow transfers to all hosts.

blackhole

Specifies a list of addresses that the server will not accept
queries from or use to resolve a query. Queries from these addresses
will not be responded to. The default is none.

Interfaces

The interfaces and ports that the server will answer queries from may
be specified using the listen-on option. listen-on takes
an optional port, and an address_match_list.
The server will listen on all interfaces allowed by the address match
list. If a port is not specified, port 53 will be used.

Multiple listen-on statements
are allowed. For example,

listen-on { 5.6.7.8; };
listen-on port 1234 { !1.2.3.4; 1.2/16; };

will enable the name server on port 53 for the IP address 5.6.7.8,
and on port 1234 of an address on the machine in net 1.2 that is not
1.2.3.4.

If no listen-on is specified,
the server will listen on port 53 on all interfaces.

The listen-on-v6 option
is used to specify the interfaces and the ports on which the server will
listen for incoming queries sent using IPv6.

When

{ any; }

is specified as the address_match_list for
the listen-on-v6 option,
the server does not bind a separate socket to each IPv6 interface address
as it does for IPv4 if the operating system has enough API support for
IPv6 (specifically if it conforms to RFC 3493 and RFC 3542). Instead,
it listens on the IPv6 wildcard address. If the system only has incomplete
API support for IPv6, however, the behavior is the same as that for IPv4.

A list of particular IPv6 addresses can also be specified, in which
case the server listens on a separate socket for each specified address,
regardless of whether the desired API is supported by the system.

Multiple listen-on-v6 options
can be used. For example,

listen-on-v6 { any; };
listen-on-v6 port 1234 { !2001:db8::/32; any; };

will enable the name server on port 53 for any IPv6 addresses (with
a single wildcard socket), and on port 1234 of IPv6 addresses that is
not in the prefix 2001:db8::/32 (with separate sockets for each matched
address.)

To make the server not listen on any IPv6 address, use

listen-on-v6 { none; };

If no listen-on-v6 option
is specified, the server will not listen on any IPv6 address.

Query Address

If the server doesn't know the answer to a question, it will query
other name servers. query-source specifies
the address and port used for such queries. For queries sent over IPv6,
there is a separate query-source-v6 option.
If address is * (asterisk)
or is omitted, a wildcard IP address (INADDR_ANY)
will be used. If port is * or
is omitted, a random unprivileged port will be used. The avoid-v4-udp-ports and avoid-v6-udp-ports options
can be used to prevent named from selecting certain ports. The defaults
are:

query-source address * port *;
query-source-v6 address * port *;

Note

The address specified in the query-source option
is used for both UDP and TCP queries, but the port applies only to
UDP queries. TCP queries always use a random unprivileged port.

Note

Solaris 2.5.1 and earlier does not support setting the source address
for TCP sockets.

Note

See also transfer-source and notify-source.

Zone Transfers

BIND has mechanisms in place to
facilitate zone transfers and set limits on the amount of load that transfers
place on the system. The following options apply to zone transfers.

also-notify

Defines a global list of IP addresses of name servers that are
also sent NOTIFY messages whenever a fresh copy of the zone is
loaded, in addition to the servers listed in the zone's NS records.
This helps to ensure that copies of the zones will quickly converge
on stealth servers. If an also-notify list
is given in a zone statement,
it will override the options also-notify statement.
When a zone notify statement
is set to no, the
IP addresses in the global also-notify list
will not be sent NOTIFY messages for that zone. The default is
the empty list (no global notification list).

max-transfer-time-in

Inbound zone transfers running longer than this many minutes
will be terminated. The default is 120 minutes (2 hours). The maximum
value is 28 days (40320 minutes).

max-transfer-idle-in

Inbound zone transfers making no progress in this many minutes
will be terminated. The default is 60 minutes (1 hour). The maximum
value is 28 days (40320 minutes).

max-transfer-time-out

Outbound zone transfers running longer than this many minutes
will be terminated. The default is 120 minutes (2 hours). The maximum
value is 28 days (40320 minutes).

max-transfer-idle-out

Outbound zone transfers making no progress in this many minutes
will be terminated. The default is 60 minutes (1 hour). The maximum
value is 28 days (40320 minutes).

serial-query-rate

Slave servers will periodically query master servers to find
out if zone serial numbers have changed. Each such query uses a
minute amount of the slave server's network bandwidth. To limit
the amount of bandwidth used, BIND 9 limits the rate at which queries
are sent. The value of the serial-query-rate option,
an integer, is the maximum number of queries sent per second. The
default is 20.

serial-queries

In BIND 8, the serial-queries option
set the maximum number of concurrent serial number queries allowed
to be outstanding at any given time. BIND 9 does not limit the
number of outstanding serial queries and ignores the serial-queries option.
Instead, it limits the rate at which the queries are sent as defined
using the serial-query-rate option.

transfer-format

Zone transfers can be sent using two different formats, one-answer and many-answers.
The transfer-format option
is used on the master server to determine which format it sends. one-answer uses
one DNS message per resource record transferred. many-answers packs
as many resource records as possible into a message. many-answers is
more efficient, but is only supported by relatively new slave servers,
such as BIND 9, BIND 8.x
and BIND 4.9.5 onwards. The many-answers format
is also supported by recent Microsoft Windows nameservers. The
default is many-answers. transfer-format may
be overridden on a per-server basis by using the server statement.

transfers-in

The maximum number of inbound zone transfers that can be running
concurrently. The default value is 10.
Increasing transfers-in may
speed up the convergence of slave zones, but it also may increase
the load on the local system.

transfers-out

The maximum number of outbound zone transfers that can be running
concurrently. Zone transfer requests in excess of the limit will
be refused. The default value is 10.

transfers-per-ns

The maximum number of inbound zone transfers that can be concurrently
transferring from a given remote name server. The default value
is 2. Increasing transfers-per-ns may
speed up the convergence of slave zones, but it also may increase
the load on the remote name server. transfers-per-ns may
be overridden on a per-server basis by using the transfers phrase
of the server statement.

transfer-source

transfer-source determines
which local address will be bound to IPv4 TCP connections used
to fetch zones transferred inbound by the server. It also determines
the source IPv4 address, and optionally the UDP port, used for
the refresh queries and forwarded dynamic updates. If not set,
it defaults to a system controlled value which will usually be
the address of the interface "closest to" the remote end. This
address must appear in the remote end's allow-transfer option
for the zone being transferred, if one is specified. This statement
sets the transfer-source for
all zones, but can be overridden on a per-view or per-zone basis
by including a transfer-source statement
within the view or zone block
in the configuration file.

Note

Solaris 2.5.1 and earlier does not support setting the source
address for TCP sockets.

transfer-source-v6

The same as transfer-source,
except zone transfers are performed using IPv6.

alt-transfer-source

An alternate transfer source if the one listed in transfer-source fails
and use-alt-transfer-source is
set.

Note

If you do not wish the alternate transfer source to be used, you
should set use-alt-transfer-source appropriately
and you should not depend upon getting a answer back to the first
refresh query.

alt-transfer-source-v6

An alternate transfer source if the one listed in transfer-source-v6 fails
and use-alt-transfer-source is
set.

use-alt-transfer-source

Use the alternate transfer sources or not. If views are specified
this defaults to no otherwise
it defaults to yes (for
BIND 8 compatibility).

notify-source

notify-source determines
which local source address, and optionally UDP port, will be used
to send NOTIFY messages. This address must appear in the slave
server's masters zone
clause or in an allow-notify clause.
This statement sets the notify-source for
all zones, but can be overridden on a per-zone or per-view basis
by including a notify-source statement
within the zone or view block
in the configuration file.

Note

Solaris 2.5.1 and earlier does not support setting the source
address for TCP sockets.

notify-source-v6

Like notify-source,
but applies to notify messages sent to IPv6 addresses.

Bad UDP Port Lists

avoid-v4-udp-ports and avoid-v6-udp-ports specify
a list of IPv4 and IPv6 UDP ports that will not be used as system assigned
source ports for UDP sockets. These lists prevent named from choosing
as its random source port a port that is blocked by your firewall. If
a query went out with such a source port, the answer would not get by
the firewall and the name server would have to query again.

Operating System Resource
Limits

The server's usage of many system resources can be limited. Scaled
values are allowed when specifying resource limits. For example, 1G can
be used instead of 1073741824 to
specify a limit of one gigabyte. unlimited requests
unlimited use, or the maximum available amount. default uses
the limit that was in force when the server was started. See the description
of size_spec in the
section called “Configuration File Elements”
.

The following options set operating system resource limits for the
name server process. Some operating systems don't support some or any
of the limits. On such systems, a warning will be issued if the unsupported
limit is used.

coresize

The maximum size of a core dump. The default is default.

datasize

The maximum amount of data memory the server may use. The default
is default. This is a hard limit on
server memory usage. If the server attempts to allocate memory
in excess of this limit, the allocation will fail, which may in
turn leave the server unable to perform DNS service. Therefore,
this option is rarely useful as a way of limiting the amount of
memory used by the server, but it can be used to raise an operating
system data size limit that is too small by default. If you wish
to limit the amount of memory used by the server, use the max-cache-size and recursive-clients options
instead.

files

The maximum number of files the server may have open concurrently.
The default is unlimited.

stacksize

The maximum amount of stack memory the server may use. The default
is default.

Server Resource Limits

The following options set limits on the server's resource consumption
that are enforced internally by the server rather than the operating
system.

max-ixfr-log-size

This option is obsolete; it is accepted and ignored for BIND
8 compatibility. The option max-journal-size performs
a similar function in BIND 9.

max-journal-size

Sets a maximum size for each journal file (see the
section called “The journal file”
). When the
journal file approaches the specified size, some of the oldest
transactions in the journal will be automatically removed. The
default is unlimited.

host-statistics-max

In BIND 8, specifies the maximum number of host statistics entries
to be kept. Not implemented in BIND 9.

recursive-clients

The maximum number of simultaneous recursive lookups the server
will perform on behalf of clients. The default is 1000.
Because each recursing client uses a fair bit of memory, on the
order of 20 kilobytes, the value of the recursive-clients option
may have to be decreased on hosts with limited memory.

tcp-clients

The maximum number of simultaneous client TCP connections that
the server will accept. The default is 100.

max-cache-size

The maximum amount of memory to use for the server's cache, in
bytes. When the amount of data in the cache reaches this limit,
the server will cause records to expire prematurely so that the
limit is not exceeded. In a server with multiple views, the limit
applies separately to the cache of each view. The default is unlimited,
meaning that records are purged from the cache only when their
TTLs expire.

tcp-listen-queue

The listen queue depth. The default and minimum is 3. If the
kernel supports the accept filter "dataready" this also controls
how many TCP connections that will be queued in kernel space waiting
for some data before being passed to accept. Values less than 3
will be silently raised.

Periodic Task Intervals

cleaning-interval

The server will remove expired resource records from the cache
every cleaning-interval minutes.
The default is 60 minutes. The maximum value is 28 days (40320
minutes). If set to 0, no periodic cleaning will occur.

heartbeat-interval

The server will perform zone maintenance tasks for all zones
marked as dialup whenever
this interval expires. The default is 60 minutes. Reasonable values
are up to 1 day (1440 minutes). The maximum value is 28 days (40320
minutes). If set to 0, no zone maintenance for these zones will
occur.

interface-interval

The server will scan the network interface list every interface-interval minutes.
The default is 60 minutes. The maximum value is 28 days (40320
minutes). If set to 0, interface scanning will only occur when
the configuration file is loaded. After the scan, the server will
begin listening for queries on any newly discovered interfaces
(provided they are allowed by the listen-on configuration),
and will stop listening on interfaces that have gone away.

statistics-interval

Name server statistics will be logged every statistics-interval minutes.
The default is 60. The maximum value is 28 days (40320 minutes).
If set to 0, no statistics will be logged.

Note

Not yet implemented in BIND9.

Topology

All other things being equal, when the server chooses a name server
to query from a list of name servers, it prefers the one that is topologically
closest to itself. The topology statement
takes an address_match_list and
interprets it in a special way. Each top-level list element is assigned
a distance. Non-negated elements get a distance based on their position
in the list, where the closer the match is to the start of the list,
the shorter the distance is between it and the server. A negated match
will be assigned the maximum distance from the server. If there is no
match, the address will get a distance which is further than any non-negated
list element, and closer than any negated element. For example,

topology {
    10/8;
    !1.2.3/24;
    { 1.2/16; 3/8; };
};

will prefer servers on network 10 the most, followed by hosts on network
1.2.0.0 (netmask 255.255.0.0) and network 3, with the exception of hosts
on network 1.2.3 (netmask 255.255.255.0), which is preferred least of
all.

The default topology is

    topology { localhost; localnets; };

Note

The topology option
is not implemented in BIND 9.

The sortlist Statement

The response to a DNS query may consist of multiple resource records
(RRs) forming a resource records set (RRset). The name server will normally
return the RRs within the RRset in an indeterminate order (but see the rrset-order statement
in the section called “RRset
Ordering”
). The client resolver code should rearrange the RRs
as appropriate, that is, using any addresses on the local net in preference
to other addresses. However, not all resolvers can do this or are correctly
configured. When a client is using a local server, the sorting can be
performed in the server, based on the client's address. This only requires
configuring the name servers, not all the clients.

The sortlist statement
(see below) takes an address_match_list and
interprets it even more specifically than the topology statement
does (the section called “Topology”).
Each top level statement in the sortlist must
itself be an explicit address_match_list with
one or two elements. The first element (which may be an IP address, an
IP prefix, an ACL name or a nested address_match_list)
of each top level list is checked against the source address of the query
until a match is found.

Once the source address of the query has been matched, if the top level
statement contains only one element, the actual primitive element that
matched the source address is used to select the address in the response
to move to the beginning of the response. If the statement is a list
of two elements, then the second element is treated the same as the address_match_list in
a topology statement. Each
top level element is assigned a distance and the address in the response
with the minimum distance is moved to the beginning of the response.

In the following example, any queries received from any of the addresses
of the host itself will get responses preferring addresses on any of
the locally connected networks. Next most preferred are addresses on
the 192.168.1/24 network, and after that either the 192.168.2/24 or 192.168.3/24
network with no preference shown between these two networks. Queries
received from a host on the 192.168.1/24 network will prefer other addresses
on that network to the 192.168.2/24 and 192.168.3/24 networks. Queries
received from a host on the 192.168.4/24 or the 192.168.5/24 network
will only prefer other addresses on their directly connected networks.

sortlist {
    { localhost;                                   // IF   the local host
        { localnets;                               // THEN first fit on the
            192.168.1/24;                          //   following nets
            { 192.168.2/24; 192.168.3/24; }; }; };
    { 192.168.1/24;                                // IF   on class C 192.168.1
        { 192.168.1/24;                            // THEN use .1, or .2 or .3
            { 192.168.2/24; 192.168.3/24; }; }; };
    { 192.168.2/24;                                // IF   on class C 192.168.2
        { 192.168.2/24;                            // THEN use .2, or .1 or .3
            { 192.168.1/24; 192.168.3/24; }; }; };
    { 192.168.3/24;                                // IF   on class C 192.168.3
        { 192.168.3/24;                            // THEN use .3, or .1 or .2
            { 192.168.1/24; 192.168.2/24; }; }; };
    { { 192.168.4/24; 192.168.5/24; };             // if .4 or .5, prefer that net
    };
};

The following example will give reasonable behavior for the local host
and hosts on directly connected networks. It is similar to the behavior
of the address sort in BIND 4.9.x.
Responses sent to queries from the local host will favor any of the directly
connected networks. Responses sent to queries from any other hosts on
a directly connected network will prefer addresses on that same network.
Responses to other queries will not be sorted.

sortlist {
           { localhost; localnets; };
           { localnets; };
};

RRset Ordering

When multiple records are returned in an answer it may be useful to
configure the order of the records placed into the response. The rrset-order statement
permits configuration of the ordering of the records in a multiple record
response. See also the sortlist statement, the
section called “The sortlist Statement”
.

An order_spec is defined
as follows:

[class class_name]
[type type_name]
[name "domain_name"]
order ordering

If no class is specified, the default is ANY.
If no type is specified, the default is ANY.
If no name is specified, the default is "*" (asterisk).

The legal values for ordering are:



fixed

Records are returned in the order they are defined in the
zone file.

random

Records are returned in some random order.

cyclic

Records are returned in a round-robin order.

For example:

rrset-order {
   class IN type A name "host.example.com" order random;
   order cyclic;
};

will cause any responses for type A records in class IN that have "host.example.com" as
a suffix, to always be returned in random order. All other records are
returned in cyclic order.

If multiple rrset-order statements
appear, they are not combined — the last one applies.

Note

The rrset-order statement
is not yet fully implemented in BIND 9.
BIND 9 currently does not fully support "fixed" ordering.

Tuning

lame-ttl

Sets the number of seconds to cache a lame server indication.
0 disables caching. (This is NOT recommended.)
The default is 600 (10 minutes) and
the maximum value is 1800 (30 minutes).

max-ncache-ttl

To reduce network traffic and increase performance, the server
stores negative answers. max-ncache-ttl is
used to set a maximum retention time for these answers in the server
in seconds. The default max-ncache-ttl is 10800 seconds
(3 hours). max-ncache-ttl cannot
exceed 7 days and will be silently truncated to 7 days if set to
a greater value.

max-cache-ttl

Sets the maximum time for which the server will cache ordinary
(positive) answers. The default is one week (7 days).

min-roots

The minimum number of root servers that is required for a request
for the root servers to be accepted. The default is 2.

Note

Not implemented in BIND 9.

sig-validity-interval

Specifies the number of days into the future when DNSSEC signatures
automatically generated as a result of dynamic updates (the
section called “Dynamic Update”
) will expire. The
default is 30 days. The maximum value
is 10 years (3660 days). The signature inception time is unconditionally
set to one hour before the current time to allow for a limited
amount of clock skew.

min-refresh-time, max-refresh-time, min-retry-time, max-retry-time

These options control the server's behavior on refreshing a zone
(querying for SOA changes) or retrying failed transfers. Usually
the SOA values for the zone are used, but these values are set
by the master, giving slave server administrators little control
over their contents.

These options allow the administrator to set a minimum and maximum
refresh and retry time either per-zone, per-view, or globally.
These options are valid for slave and stub zones, and clamp the
SOA refresh and retry times to the specified values.

edns-udp-size

Sets the advertised EDNS UDP buffer size in bytes. Valid values
are 512 to 4096 (values outside this range will be silently adjusted).
The default value is 4096. The usual reason for setting edns-udp-size
to a non-default value it to get UDP answers to pass through broken
firewalls that block fragmented packets and/or block UDP packets
that are greater than 512 bytes.

max-udp-size

Sets the maximum EDNS UDP message size named will send in bytes.
Valid values are 512 to 4096 (values outside this range will be
silently adjusted). The default value is 4096. The usual reason
for setting max-udp-size to a non-default value is to get UDP answers
to pass through broken firewalls that block fragmented packets
and/or block UDP packets that are greater than 512 bytes.

masterfile-format

Specifies the file format of zone files (see the
section called “Additional File Formats”
). The
default value is text, which is
the standard textual representation. Files in other formats than text are
typically expected to be generated by the named-compilezone tool.
Note that when a zone file in a different format than text is
loaded, named may
omit some of the checks which would be performed for a file in
the text format. In particular, check-names checks
do not apply for the raw format.
This means a zone file in the raw format
must be generated with the same check level as that specified
in the named configuration
file. This statement sets the masterfile-format for
all zones, but can be overridden on a per-zone or per-view basis
by including a masterfile-format statement
within the zone or view block
in the configuration file.

clients-per-query, max-clients-per-query

These set the initial value (minimum) and maximum number of recursive
simultanious clients for any given query (<qname,qtype,qclass>)
that the server will accept before dropping additional clients.
named will attempt to self tune this value and changes will be
logged. The default values are 10 and 100.

This value should reflect how many queries come in for a given
name in the time it takes to resolve that name. If the number of
queries exceed this value, named will assume that it is dealing
with a non-responsive zone and will drop additional queries. If
it gets a response after dropping queries, it will raise the estimate.
The estimate will then be lowered in 20 minutes if it has remained
unchanged.

If clients-per-query is
set to zero, then there is no limit on the number of clients per
query and no queries will be dropped.

If max-clients-per-query is
set to zero, then there is no upper bound other than imposed by recursive-clients.

Built-in server information
zones

The server provides some helpful diagnostic information through a number
of built-in zones under the pseudo-top-level-domain bind in
the CHAOS class. These
zones are part of a built-in view (see the
section called “view Statement
Grammar”
) of class CHAOS which
is separate from the default view of class IN;
therefore, any global server options such as allow-query do
not apply the these zones. If you feel the need to disable these zones,
use the options below, or hide the built-in CHAOS view
by defining an explicit view of class CHAOS that
matches all clients.

version

The version the server should report via a query of the name version.bind with
type TXT, class CHAOS.
The default is the real version number of this server. Specifying version
none
disables processing of the queries.

hostname

The hostname the server should report via a query of the name hostname.bind with
type TXT, class CHAOS.
This defaults to the hostname of the machine hosting the name server
as found by the gethostname() function. The primary purpose of
such queries is to identify which of a group of anycast servers
is actually answering your queries. Specifying hostname
none;
disables processing of the queries.

server-id

The ID of the server should report via a query of the name ID.SERVER with
type TXT, class CHAOS.
The primary purpose of such queries is to identify which of a group
of anycast servers is actually answering your queries. Specifying server-id
none;
disables processing of the queries. Specifying server-id
hostname;
will cause named to use the hostname
as found by the gethostname() function. The default server-id is none.

Built-in Empty Zones

Named has some built-in empty zones (SOA and NS records only). These
are for zones that should normally be answered locally and which queries
should not be sent to the Internet's root servers. The offical servers
which cover these namespaces return NXDOMAIN responses to these queries.
In particular, these cover the reverse namespace for addresses from RFC
1918 and RFC 3330. They also include the reverse namespace for IPv6 local
address (locally assigned), IPv6 link local addresses, the IPv6 loopback
address and the IPv6 unknown addresss.

Named will attempt to determine if a built in zone already exists or
is active (covered by a forward-only forwarding declaration) and will
not not create a empty zone in that case.

The current list of empty zones is:

  • 10.IN-ADDR.ARPA
  • 127.IN-ADDR.ARPA
  • 254.169.IN-ADDR.ARPA
  • 16.172.IN-ADDR.ARPA
  • 17.172.IN-ADDR.ARPA
  • 18.172.IN-ADDR.ARPA
  • 19.172.IN-ADDR.ARPA
  • 20.172.IN-ADDR.ARPA
  • 21.172.IN-ADDR.ARPA
  • 22.172.IN-ADDR.ARPA
  • 23.172.IN-ADDR.ARPA
  • 24.172.IN-ADDR.ARPA
  • 25.172.IN-ADDR.ARPA
  • 26.172.IN-ADDR.ARPA
  • 27.172.IN-ADDR.ARPA
  • 28.172.IN-ADDR.ARPA
  • 29.172.IN-ADDR.ARPA
  • 30.172.IN-ADDR.ARPA
  • 31.172.IN-ADDR.ARPA
  • 168.192.IN-ADDR.ARPA
  • 2.0.192.IN-ADDR.ARPA
  • 0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.IP6.ARPA
  • 1.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.IP6.ARPA
  • D.F.IP6.ARPA
  • 8.E.F.IP6.ARPA
  • 9.E.F.IP6.ARPA
  • A.E.F.IP6.ARPA
  • B.E.F.IP6.ARPA

Empty zones are settable at the view level and only apply to views
of class IN. Disabled empty zones are only inherited from options if
there are no disabled empty zones specified at the view level. To override
the options list of disabled zones, you can disable the root zone at
the view level, for example:

            disable-empty-zone ".";

If you are using the address ranges covered here, you should already
have reverse zones covering the addresses you use. In practice this appears
to not be the case with many queries being made to the infrustructure
servers for names in these spaces. So many in fact that sacrificial servers
were needed to be deployed to channel the query load away from the infrustructure
servers.

Note

The real parent servers for these zones should disable all empty zone
under the parent zone they serve. For the real root servers, this is
all built in empty zones. This will enable them to return referrals to
deeper in the tree.

empty-server

Specify what server name will appear in the returned SOA record
for empty zones. If none is specified, then the zone's name will
be used.

empty-contact

Specify what contact name will appear in the returned SOA record
for empty zones. If none is specified, then
"." will be used.

empty-zones-enable

Enable or disable all empty zones. By default they are enabled.

disable-empty-zone

Disable individual empty zones. By default none are disabled.
This option can be specified multiple times.

The Statistics File

The statistics file generated by BIND 9
is similar, but not identical, to that generated by BIND 8.

The statistics dump begins with a line, like:

+++ Statistics Dump +++ (973798949)

The number in parentheses is a standard Unix-style timestamp, measured
as seconds since January 1, 1970. Following that line are a series of
lines containing a counter type, the value of the counter, optionally
a zone name, and optionally a view name. The lines without view and zone
listed are global statistics for the entire server. Lines with a zone
and view name for the given view and zone (the view name is omitted for
the default view).

The statistics dump ends with the line where the number is identical
to the number in the beginning line; for example:

--- Statistics Dump --- (973798949)

The following statistics counters are maintained:



success

The number of successful queries made to the server or
zone. A successful query is defined as query which returns
a NOERROR response with at least one answer RR.

referral

The number of queries which resulted in referral responses.

nxrrset

The number of queries which resulted in NOERROR responses
with no data.

nxdomain

The number of queries which resulted in NXDOMAIN responses.

failure

The number of queries which resulted in a failure response
other than those above.

recursion

The number of queries which caused the server to perform
recursion in order to find the final answer.

Each query received by the server will cause exactly one of success, referral, nxrrset, nxdomain,
or failure to be incremented,
and may additionally cause the recursion counter
to be incremented.

Additional Section Caching

The additional section cache, also called acache,
is an internal cache to improve the response performance of BIND 9. When
additional section caching is enabled, BIND 9 will cache an internal
short-cut to the additional section content for each answer RR. Note
that acache is an internal
caching mechanism of BIND 9, and is not related to the DNS caching server
function.

Additional section caching does not change the response content (except
the RRsets ordering of the additional section, see below), but can improve
the response performance significantly. It is particularly effective
when BIND 9 acts as an authoritative server for a zone that has many
delegations with many glue RRs.

In order to obtain the maximum performance improvement from additional
section caching, setting additional-from-cache to no is
recommended, since the current implementation of acache does
not short-cut of additional section information from the DNS cache data.

One obvious disadvantage of acache is
that it requires much more memory for the internal cached data. Thus,
if the response performance does not matter and memory consumption is
much more critical, the acache mechanism
can be disabled by setting acache-enable to no.
It is also possible to specify the upper limit of memory consumption
for acache by using max-acache-size.

Additional section caching also has a minor effect on the RRset ordering
in the additional section. Without acache, cyclic order
is effective for the additional section as well as the answer and authority
sections. However, additional section caching fixes the ordering when
it first caches an RRset for the additional section, and the same ordering
will be kept in succeeding responses, regardless of the setting of rrset-order.
The effect of this should be minor, however, since an RRset in the additional
section typically only contains a small number of RRs (and in many cases
it only contains a single RR), in which case the ordering does not matter
much.

The following is a summary of options related to acache.

acache-enable

If yes, additional
section caching is enabled. The default value is no.

acache-cleaning-interval

The server will remove stale cache entries, based on an LRU based
algorithm, every acache-cleaning-interval minutes.
The default is 60 minutes. If set to 0, no periodic cleaning will
occur.

max-acache-size

The maximum amount of memory in bytes to use for the server's
acache. When the amount of data in the acache reaches this limit,
the server will clean more aggressively so that the limit is not
exceeded. In a server with multiple views, the limit applies separately
to the acache of each view. The default is unlimited,
meaning that entries are purged from the acache only at the periodic
cleaning time.

server Statement
Grammar

server ip_addr[/prefixlen] {
    [ bogus yes_or_no ; ]
    [ provide-ixfr yes_or_no ; ]
    [ request-ixfr yes_or_no ; ]
    [ edns yes_or_no ; ]
    [ edns-udp-size number ; ]
    [ max-udp-size number ; ]
    [ transfers number ; ]
    [ transfer-format ( one-answer | many-answers ) ; ]]
    [ keys { string ; [ string ; [...]] } ; ]
    [ transfer-source (ip4_addr | *) [port ip_port] ; ]
    [ transfer-source-v6 (ip6_addr | *) [port ip_port] ; ]
    [ notify-source (ip4_addr | *) [port ip_port] ; ]
    [ notify-source-v6 (ip6_addr | *) [port ip_port] ; ]
    [ query-source [ address ( ip_addr | * ) ] [ port ( ip_port | * ) ]; ]
    [ query-source-v6 [ address ( ip_addr | * ) ] [ port ( ip_port | * ) ]; ]
};

server Statement
Definition and Usage

The server statement defines
characteristics to be associated with a remote name server. If a prefix
length is specified, then a range of servers is covered. Only the most
specific server clause applies regardless of the order in named.conf.

The server statement can
occur at the top level of the configuration file or inside a view statement.
If a view statement contains
one or more server statements,
only those apply to the view and any top-level ones are ignored. If a view
contains no server statements,
any top-level server statements
are used as defaults.

If you discover that a remote server is giving out bad data, marking
it as bogus will prevent further queries to it. The default value of bogus is no.

The provide-ixfr clause
determines whether the local server, acting as master, will respond with
an incremental zone transfer when the given remote server, a slave, requests
it. If set to yes, incremental
transfer will be provided whenever possible. If set to no,
all transfers to the remote server will be non-incremental. If not set,
the value of the provide-ixfr option
in the view or global options block is used as a default.

The request-ixfr clause
determines whether the local server, acting as a slave, will request incremental
zone transfers from the given remote server, a master. If not set, the
value of the request-ixfr option
in the view or global options block is used as a default.

IXFR requests to servers that do not support IXFR will automatically
fall back to AXFR. Therefore, there is no need to manually list which servers
support IXFR and which ones do not; the global default of yes should
always work. The purpose of the provide-ixfr and request-ixfr clauses
is to make it possible to disable the use of IXFR even when both master
and slave claim to support it, for example if one of the servers is buggy
and crashes or corrupts data when IXFR is used.

The edns clause determines
whether the local server will attempt to use EDNS when communicating with
the remote server. The default is yes.

The edns-udp-size option
sets the EDNS UDP size that is advertised by named when querying the remote
server. Valid values are 512 to 4096 bytes (values outside this range will
be silently adjusted). This option is useful when you wish to advertises
a different value to this server than the value you advertise globally,
for example, when there is a firewall at the remote site that is blocking
large replies.

The max-udp-size option
sets the maximum EDNS UDP message size named will send. Valid values are
512 to 4096 bytes (values outside this range will be silently adjusted).
This option is useful when you know that there is a firewall that is blocking
large replies from named.

The server supports two zone transfer methods. The first, one-answer,
uses one DNS message per resource record transferred. many-answers packs
as many resource records as possible into a message. many-answers is
more efficient, but is only known to be understood by BIND 9, BIND 8.x,
and patched versions of BIND 4.9.5.
You can specify which method to use for a server with the transfer-format option.
If transfer-format is not
specified, the transfer-format specified
by the options statement
will be used.

transfers is used to limit
the number of concurrent inbound zone transfers from the specified server.
If no transfers clause is
specified, the limit is set according to the transfers-per-ns option.

The keys clause identifies
a key_id defined by the key statement,
to be used for transaction security (TSIG, the
section called “TSIG”
) when talking to the remote server.
When a request is sent to the remote server, a request signature will be
generated using the key specified here and appended to the message. A request
originating from the remote server is not required to be signed by this
key.

Although the grammar of the keys clause
allows for multiple keys, only a single key per server is currently supported.

The transfer-source and transfer-source-v6 clauses
specify the IPv4 and IPv6 source address to be used for zone transfer with
the remote server, respectively. For an IPv4 remote server, only transfer-source can
be specified. Similarly, for an IPv6 remote server, only transfer-source-v6 can
be specified. For more details, see the description of transfer-source and transfer-source-v6 in the
section called “Zone Transfers”
.

The notify-source and notify-source-v6 clauses
specify the IPv4 and IPv6 source address to be used for notify messages
sent to remote servers, respectively. For an IPv4 remote server, only notify-source can
be specified. Similarly, for an IPv6 remote server, only notify-source-v6 can
be specified.

The query-source and query-source-v6 clauses
specify the IPv4 and IPv6 source address to be used for queries sent to
remote servers, respectively. For an IPv4 remote server, only query-source can
be specified. Similarly, for an IPv6 remote server, only query-source-v6 can
be specified.

trusted-keys Statement
Grammar

trusted-keys {
    string number number number string ;
    [ string number number number string ; [...]]
};

trusted-keys Statement
Definition and Usage

The trusted-keys statement
defines DNSSEC security roots. DNSSEC is described in the
section called “DNSSEC”
. A security root is defined when
the public key for a non-authoritative zone is known, but cannot be securely
obtained through DNS, either because it is the DNS root zone or because
its parent zone is unsigned. Once a key has been configured as a trusted
key, it is treated as if it had been validated and proven secure. The resolver
attempts DNSSEC validation on all DNS data in subdomains of a security
root.

All keys (and corresponding zones) listed in trusted-keys are
deemed to exist regardless of what parent zones say. Similarly for all
keys listed in trusted-keys only
those keys are used to validate the DNSKEY RRset. The parent's DS RRset
will not be used.

The trusted-keys statement
can contain multiple key entries, each consisting of the key's domain name,
flags, protocol, algorithm, and the Base-64 representation of the key data.

view Statement
Grammar

view view_name
      [class] {
      match-clients { address_match_list };
      match-destinations { address_match_list };
      match-recursive-only yes_or_no ;
      [ view_option; ...]
      [ zone_statement; ...]
};

view Statement
Definition and Usage

The view statement is a
powerful feature of BIND 9 that lets
a name server answer a DNS query differently depending on who is asking.
It is particularly useful for implementing split DNS setups without having
to run multiple servers.

Each view statement defines
a view of the DNS namespace that will be seen by a subset of clients. A
client matches a view if its source IP address matches the address_match_list of
the view's match-clients clause
and its destination IP address matches the address_match_list of
the view's match-destinations clause.
If not specified, both match-clients and match-destinations default
to matching all addresses. In addition to checking IP addresses match-clients and match-destinations can
also take keys which provide
an mechanism for the client to select the view. A view can also be specified
as match-recursive-only,
which means that only recursive requests from matching clients will match
that view. The order of the view statements
is significant —
a client request will be resolved in the context of the first view that
it matches.

Zones defined within a view statement
will be only be accessible to clients that match the view.
By defining a zone of the same name in multiple views, different zone data
can be given to different clients, for example,
"internal"
and "external" clients in a split DNS setup.

Many of the options given in the options statement
can also be used within a view statement,
and then apply only when resolving queries with that view. When no view-specific
value is given, the value in the options statement
is used as a default. Also, zone options can have default values specified
in the view statement; these
view-specific defaults take precedence over those in the options statement.

Views are class specific. If no class is given, class IN is assumed.
Note that all non-IN views must contain a hint zone, since only the IN
class has compiled-in default hints.

If there are no view statements
in the config file, a default view that matches any client is automatically
created in class IN. Any zone statements
specified on the top level of the configuration file are considered to
be part of this default view, and the options statement
will apply to the default view. If any explicit view statements
are present, all zone statements
must occur inside view statements.

Here is an example of a typical split DNS setup implemented using view statements:

view "internal" {
      // This should match our internal networks.
      match-clients { 10.0.0.0/8; };

      // Provide recursive service to internal clients only.
      recursion yes;

      // Provide a complete view of the example.com zone
      // including addresses of internal hosts.
      zone "example.com" {
            type master;
            file "example-internal.db";
      };
};

view "external" {
      // Match all clients not matched by the previous view.
      match-clients { any; };

      // Refuse recursive service to external clients.
      recursion no;

      // Provide a restricted view of the example.com zone
      // containing only publicly accessible hosts.
      zone "example.com" {
           type master;
           file "example-external.db";
      };
};

zone Statement
Grammar

zone zone_name [class] {
    type master;
    [ allow-query { address_match_list }; ]
    [ allow-transfer { address_match_list }; ]
    [ allow-update { address_match_list }; ]
    [ update-policy { update_policy_rule [...] }; ]
    [ also-notify { ip_addr [port ip_port] ; [ ip_addr [port ip_port] ; ... ] }; ]
    [ check-names (warn|fail|ignore) ; ]
    [ check-mx (warn|fail|ignore) ; ]
    [ check-wildcard yes_or_no; ]
    [ check-integrity yes_or_no ; ]
    [ dialup dialup_option ; ]
    [ file string ; ]
    [ masterfile-format (text|raw) ; ]
    [ journal string ; ]
    [ forward (only|first) ; ]
    [ forwarders { [ ip_addr [port ip_port] ; ... ] }; ]
    [ ixfr-base string ; ]
    [ ixfr-tmp-file string ; ]
    [ maintain-ixfr-base yes_or_no ; ]
    [ max-ixfr-log-size number ; ]
    [ max-transfer-idle-out number ; ]
    [ max-transfer-time-out number ; ]
    [ notify yes_or_no | explicit | master-only ; ]
    [ pubkey number number number string ; ]
    [ notify-source (ip4_addr | *) [port ip_port] ; ]
    [ notify-source-v6 (ip6_addr | *) [port ip_port] ; ]
    [ zone-statistics yes_or_no ; ]
    [ sig-validity-interval number ; ]
    [ database string ; ]
    [ min-refresh-time number ; ]
    [ max-refresh-time number ; ]
    [ min-retry-time number ; ]
    [ max-retry-time number ; ]
    [ key-directory path_name; ]
    [ zero-no-soa-ttl yes_or_no ; ]
};

zone zone_name [class] {
    type slave;
    [ allow-notify { address_match_list }; ]
    [ allow-query { address_match_list }; ]
    [ allow-transfer { address_match_list }; ]
    [ allow-update-forwarding { address_match_list }; ]
    [ update-check-ksk yes_or_no; ]
    [ also-notify { ip_addr [port ip_port] ; [ ip_addr [port ip_port] ; ... ] }; ]
    [ check-names (warn|fail|ignore) ; ]
    [ dialup dialup_option ; ]
    [ file string ; ]
    [ masterfile-format (text|raw) ; ]
    [ journal string ; ]
    [ forward (only|first) ; ]
    [ forwarders { [ ip_addr [port ip_port] ; ... ] }; ]
    [ ixfr-base string ; ]
    [ ixfr-tmp-file string ; ]
    [ maintain-ixfr-base yes_or_no ; ]
    [ masters [port ip_port] { ( masters_list | ip_addr [port ip_port] [key key] ) ; [...] }; ]
    [ max-ixfr-log-size number ; ]
    [ max-transfer-idle-in number ; ]
    [ max-transfer-idle-out number ; ]
    [ max-transfer-time-in number ; ]
    [ max-transfer-time-out number ; ]
    [ notify yes_or_no | explicit | master-only ; ]
    [ pubkey number number number string ; ]
    [ transfer-source (ip4_addr | *) [port ip_port] ; ]
    [ transfer-source-v6 (ip6_addr | *) [port ip_port] ; ]
    [ alt-transfer-source (ip4_addr | *) [port ip_port] ; ]
    [ alt-transfer-source-v6 (ip6_addr | *) [port ip_port] ; ]
    [ use-alt-transfer-source yes_or_no; ]
    [ notify-source (ip4_addr | *) [port ip_port] ; ]
    [ notify-source-v6 (ip6_addr | *) [port ip_port] ; ]
    [ zone-statistics yes_or_no ; ]
    [ database string ; ]
    [ min-refresh-time number ; ]
    [ max-refresh-time number ; ]
    [ min-retry-time number ; ]
    [ max-retry-time number ; ]
    [ multi-master yes_or_no ; ]
    [ zero-no-soa-ttl yes_or_no ; ]
};

zone zone_name [class] {
    type hint;
    file string ;
    [ delegation-only yes_or_no ; ]
    [ check-names (warn|fail|ignore) ; // Not Implemented. ]
};

zone zone_name [class] {
    type stub;
    [ allow-query { address_match_list }; ]
    [ check-names (warn|fail|ignore) ; ]
    [ dialup dialup_option ; ]
    [ delegation-only yes_or_no ; ]
    [ file string ; ]
    [ masterfile-format (text|raw) ; ]
    [ forward (only|first) ; ]
    [ forwarders { [ ip_addr [port ip_port] ; ... ] }; ]
    [ masters [port ip_port] { ( masters_list | ip_addr [port ip_port] [key key] ) ; [...] }; ]
    [ max-transfer-idle-in number ; ]
    [ max-transfer-time-in number ; ]
    [ pubkey number number number string ; ]
    [ transfer-source (ip4_addr | *) [port ip_port] ; ]
    [ transfer-source-v6 (ip6_addr | *) [port ip_port] ; ]
    [ alt-transfer-source (ip4_addr | *) [port ip_port] ; ]
    [ alt-transfer-source-v6 (ip6_addr | *) [port ip_port] ; ]
    [ use-alt-transfer-source yes_or_no; ]
    [ zone-statistics yes_or_no ; ]
    [ database string ; ]
    [ min-refresh-time number ; ]
    [ max-refresh-time number ; ]
    [ min-retry-time number ; ]
    [ max-retry-time number ; ]
    [ multi-master yes_or_no ; ]
};

zone zone_name [class] {
    type forward;
    [ forward (only|first) ; ]
    [ forwarders { [ ip_addr [port ip_port] ; ... ] }; ]
    [ delegation-only yes_or_no ; ]
};

zone zone_name [class] {
    type delegation-only;
};

zone Statement
Definition and Usage

Zone Types



master

The server has a master copy of the data for the zone and
will be able to provide authoritative answers for it.

slave

A slave zone is a replica of a master zone. The masters list
specifies one or more IP addresses of master servers that the
slave contacts to update its copy of the zone. Masters list
elements can also be names of other masters lists. By default,
transfers are made from port 53 on the servers; this can be
changed for all servers by specifying a port number before
the list of IP addresses, or on a per-server basis after the
IP address. Authentication to the master can also be done with
per-server TSIG keys. If a file is specified, then the replica
will be written to this file whenever the zone is changed,
and reloaded from this file on a server restart. Use of a file
is recommended, since it often speeds server startup and eliminates
a needless waste of bandwidth. Note that for large numbers
(in the tens or hundreds of thousands) of zones per server,
it is best to use a two-level naming scheme for zone file names.
For example, a slave server for the zone example.com might
place the zone contents into a file called ex/example.com where ex/ is
just the first two letters of the zone name. (Most operating
systems behave very slowly if you put 100 000 files into a
single directory.)

stub

A stub zone is similar to a slave zone, except that it
replicates only the NS records of a master zone instead of
the entire zone. Stub zones are not a standard part of the
DNS; they are a feature specific to the BIND implementation.

Stub zones can be used to eliminate the need for glue NS
record in a parent zone at the expense of maintaining a stub
zone entry and a set of name server addresses in named.conf.
This usage is not recommended for new configurations, and BIND
9 supports it only in a limited way. In BIND 4/8,
zone transfers of a parent zone included the NS records from
stub children of that zone. This meant that, in some cases,
users could get away with configuring child stubs only in the
master server for the parent zone. BIND 9
never mixes together zone data from different zones in this
way. Therefore, if a BIND 9
master serving a parent zone has child stub zones configured,
all the slave servers for the parent zone also need to have
the same child stub zones configured.

Stub zones can also be used as a way of forcing the resolution
of a given domain to use a particular set of authoritative
servers. For example, the caching name servers on a private
network using RFC1918 addressing may be configured with stub
zones for 10.in-addr.arpa to use
a set of internal name servers as the authoritative servers
for that domain.

forward

A "forward zone" is a way to configure forwarding on a
per-domain basis. A zone statement
of type forward can
contain a forward and/or forwarders statement,
which will apply to queries within the domain given by the
zone name. If no forwarders statement
is present or an empty list for forwarders is
given, then no forwarding will be done for the domain, canceling
the effects of any forwarders in the options statement.
Thus if you want to use this type of zone to change the behavior
of the global forward option
(that is, "forward first"
to, then "forward only", or vice versa, but want to use the
same servers as set globally) you need to re-specify the global
forwarders.

hint

The initial set of root name servers is specified using
a "hint zone". When the server starts up, it uses the root
hints to find a root name server and get the most recent list
of root name servers. If no hint zone is specified for class
IN, the server uses a compiled-in default set of root servers
hints. Classes other than IN have no built-in defaults hints.

delegation-only

This is used to enforce the delegation-only status of infrastructure
zones (e.g. COM, NET, ORG). Any answer that is received without
an explicit or implicit delegation in the authority section
will be treated as NXDOMAIN. This does not apply to the zone
apex. This should not be applied to leaf zones.

delegation-only has no effect
on answers received from forwarders.

Class

The zone's name may optionally be followed by a class. If a class is
not specified, class IN (for Internet),
is assumed. This is correct for the vast majority of cases.

The hesiod class is named for an information
service from MIT's Project Athena. It is used to share information about
various systems databases, such as users, groups, printers and so on.
The keyword HS is a synonym for hesiod.

Another MIT development is CHAOSnet, a LAN protocol created in the
mid-1970s. Zone data for it can be specified with the CHAOS class.

Zone Options

allow-notify

See the description of allow-notify in the
section called “Access Control”
.

allow-query

See the description of allow-query in the
section called “Access Control”
.

allow-transfer

See the description of allow-transfer in the
section called “Access Control”
.

allow-update

See the description of allow-update in the
section called “Access Control”
.

update-policy

Specifies a "Simple Secure Update" policy. See the
section called “Dynamic Update Policies”
.

allow-update-forwarding

See the description of allow-update-forwarding in the
section called “Access Control”
.

also-notify

Only meaningful if notify is
active for this zone. The set of machines that will receive a DNS
NOTIFY
message for this zone is made up of all the listed
name servers (other than the primary master) for the zone plus
any IP addresses specified with also-notify.
A port may be specified with each also-notify address
to send the notify messages to a port other than the default of
53. also-notify is
not meaningful for stub zones. The default is the empty list.

check-names

This option is used to restrict the character set and syntax
of certain domain names in master files and/or DNS responses received
from the network. The default varies according to zone type. For master zones
the default is fail.
For slave zones the
default is warn.

check-mx

See the description of check-mx in the
section called “Boolean Options”
.

check-wildcard

See the description of check-wildcard in the
section called “Boolean Options”
.

check-integrity

See the description of check-integrity in the
section called “Boolean Options”
.

check-sibling

See the description of check-sibling in the
section called “Boolean Options”
.

zero-no-soa-ttl

See the description of zero-no-soa-ttl in the
section called “Boolean Options”
.

update-check-ksk

See the description of update-check-ksk in the
section called “Boolean Options”
.

database

Specify the type of database to be used for storing the zone
data. The string following the database keyword
is interpreted as a list of whitespace-delimited words. The first
word identifies the database type, and any subsequent words are
passed as arguments to the database to be interpreted in a way
specific to the database type.

The default is "rbt",
BIND 9's native in-memory red-black-tree database. This database
does not take arguments.

Other values are possible if additional database drivers have
been linked into the server. Some sample drivers are included with
the distribution but none are linked in by default.

dialup

See the description of dialup in the
section called “Boolean Options”
.

delegation-only

The flag only applies to hint and stub zones. If set to yes,
then the zone will also be treated as if it is also a delegation-only
type zone.

forward

Only meaningful if the zone has a forwarders list. The only value
causes the lookup to fail after trying the forwarders and getting
no answer, while first would
allow a normal lookup to be tried.

forwarders

Used to override the list of global forwarders. If it is not
specified in a zone of type forward,
no forwarding is done for the zone and the global options are not
used.

ixfr-base

Was used in BIND 8 to specify
the name of the transaction log (journal) file for dynamic update
and IXFR. BIND 9 ignores the
option and constructs the name of the journal file by appending ".jnl"
to the name of the zone file.

ixfr-tmp-file

Was an undocumented option in BIND 8.
Ignored in BIND 9.

journal

Allow the default journal's file name to be overridden. The default
is the zone's file with ".jnl" appended.
This is applicable to master and slave zones.

max-transfer-time-in

See the description of max-transfer-time-in in the
section called “Zone Transfers”
.

max-transfer-idle-in

See the description of max-transfer-idle-in in the
section called “Zone Transfers”
.

max-transfer-time-out

See the description of max-transfer-time-out in the
section called “Zone Transfers”
.

max-transfer-idle-out

See the description of max-transfer-idle-out in the
section called “Zone Transfers”
.

notify

See the description of notify in the
section called “Boolean Options”
.

pubkey

In BIND 8, this option was
intended for specifying a public zone key for verification of signatures
in DNSSEC signed zones when they are loaded from disk. BIND 9
does not verify signatures on load and ignores the option.

zone-statistics

If yes, the server
will keep statistical information for this zone, which can be dumped
to the statistics-file defined
in the server options.

sig-validity-interval

See the description of sig-validity-interval in the
section called “Tuning”
.

transfer-source

See the description of transfer-source in the
section called “Zone Transfers”
.

transfer-source-v6

See the description of transfer-source-v6 in the
section called “Zone Transfers”
.

alt-transfer-source

See the description of alt-transfer-source in the
section called “Zone Transfers”
.

alt-transfer-source-v6

See the description of alt-transfer-source-v6 in the
section called “Zone Transfers”
.

use-alt-transfer-source

See the description of use-alt-transfer-source in the
section called “Zone Transfers”
.

notify-source

See the description of notify-source in the
section called “Zone Transfers”
.

notify-source-v6

See the description of notify-source-v6 in the
section called “Zone Transfers”
.

min-refresh-time, max-refresh-time, min-retry-time, max-retry-time

See the description in the section
called “Tuning”
.

ixfr-from-differences

See the description of ixfr-from-differences in the
section called “Boolean Options”
.

key-directory

See the description of key-directory in the section called “options Statement
Definition and Usage”
.

multi-master

See the description of multi-master in the
section called “Boolean Options”
.

masterfile-format

See the description of masterfile-format in the
section called “Tuning”
.

Dynamic
Update Policies

BIND 9 supports two alternative
methods of granting clients the right to perform dynamic updates to a
zone, configured by the allow-update and update-policy option,
respectively.

The allow-update clause
works the same way as in previous versions of BIND.
It grants given clients the permission to update any record of any name
in the zone.

The update-policy clause
is new in BIND 9 and allows more fine-grained
control over what updates are allowed. A set of rules is specified, where
each rule either grants or denies permissions for one or more names to
be updated by one or more identities. If the dynamic update request message
is signed (that is, it includes either a TSIG or SIG(0) record), the
identity of the signer can be determined.

Rules are specified in the update-policy zone
option, and are only meaningful for master zones. When the update-policy statement
is present, it is a configuration error for the allow-update statement
to be present. The update-policy statement
only examines the signer of a message; the source address is not relevant.

This is how a rule definition looks:

( grant | deny ) identity nametype name [ types ]

Each rule grants or denies privileges. Once a message has successfully
matched a rule, the operation is immediately granted or denied and no
further rules are examined. A rule is matched when the signer matches
the identity field, the name matches the name field in accordance with
the nametype field, and the type matches the types specified in the type
field.

The identity field specifies a name or a wildcard name. Normally, this
is the name of the TSIG or SIG(0) key used to sign the update request.
When a TKEY exchange has been used to create a shared secret, the identity
of the shared secret is the same as the identity of the key used to authenticate
the TKEY exchange. When the identity field
specifies a wildcard name, it is subject to DNS wildcard expansion, so
the rule will apply to multiple identities. The identity field
must contain a fully qualified domain name.

The nametype field has 6
values: name, subdomain, wildcard, self, selfsub,
and selfwild.



name

Exact-match semantics. This rule matches when the name
being updated is identical to the contents of the name field.

subdomain

This rule matches when the name being updated is a subdomain
of, or identical to, the contents of the name field.

wildcard

The name field
is subject to DNS wildcard expansion, and this rule matches
when the name being updated name is a valid expansion of the
wildcard.

self

This rule matches when the name being updated matches the
contents of the identity field.
The name field is
ignored, but should be the same as the identity field.
The self nametype is most useful
when allowing using one key per name to update, where the key
has the same name as the name to be updated. The identity would
be specified as * (an asterisk)
in this case.

selfsub

This rule is similar to self except
that subdomains of self can also
be updated.

selfwild

This rule is similar to self except
that only subdomains of self can
be updated.

In all cases, the name field
must specify a fully qualified domain name.

If no types are explicitly specified, this rule matches all types except
RRSIG, NS, SOA, and NSEC. Types may be specified by name, including
"ANY" (ANY matches all types except NSEC, which can never be updated).
Note that when an attempt is made to delete all records associated with
a name, the rules are checked for each existing record type.

Zone File

Types
of Resource Records and When to Use Them

This section, largely borrowed from RFC 1034, describes the concept of
a Resource Record (RR) and explains when each is used. Since the publication
of RFC 1034, several new RRs have been identified and implemented in the
DNS. These are also included.

Resource Records

A domain name identifies a node. Each node has a set of resource information,
which may be empty. The set of resource information associated with a
particular name is composed of separate RRs. The order of RRs in a set
is not significant and need not be preserved by name servers, resolvers,
or other parts of the DNS. However, sorting of multiple RRs is permitted
for optimization purposes, for example, to specify that a particular
nearby server be tried first. See the
section called “The sortlist Statement”
and the
section called “RRset Ordering”
.

The components of a Resource Record are:



owner name

The domain name where the RR is found.

type

An encoded 16-bit value that specifies the type of the
resource record.

TTL

The time-to-live of the RR. This field is a 32-bit integer
in units of seconds, and is primarily used by resolvers when
they cache RRs. The TTL describes how long a RR can be cached
before it should be discarded.

class

An encoded 16-bit value that identifies a protocol family
or instance of a protocol.

RDATA

The resource data. The format of the data is type (and
sometimes class) specific.

The following are types of valid
RRs:



A

A host address. In the IN class, this is a 32-bit IP address.
Described in RFC 1035.

AAAA

IPv6 address. Described in RFC 1886.

A6

IPv6 address. This can be a partial address (a suffix)
and an indirection to the name where the rest of the address
(the prefix) can be found. Experimental. Described in RFC 2874.

AFSDB

Location of AFS database servers. Experimental. Described
in RFC 1183.

APL

Address prefix list. Experimental. Described in RFC 3123.

CERT

Holds a digital certificate. Described in RFC 2538.

CNAME

Identifies the canonical name of an alias. Described in
RFC 1035.

DNAME

Replaces the domain name specified with another name to
be looked up, effectively aliasing an entire subtree of the
domain name space rather than a single record as in the case
of the CNAME RR. Described in RFC 2672.

DNSKEY

Stores a public key associated with a signed DNS zone.
Described in RFC 4034.

DS

Stores the hash of a public key associated with a signed
DNS zone. Described in RFC 4034.

GPOS

Specifies the global position. Superseded by LOC.

HINFO

Identifies the CPU and OS used by a host. Described in
RFC 1035.

ISDN

Representation of ISDN addresses. Experimental. Described
in RFC 1183.

KEY

Stores a public key associated with a DNS name. Used in
original DNSSEC; replaced by DNSKEY in DNSSECbis, but still
used with SIG(0). Described in RFCs 2535 and 2931.

KX

Identifies a key exchanger for this DNS name. Described
in RFC 2230.

LOC

For storing GPS info. Described in RFC 1876. Experimental.

MX

Identifies a mail exchange for the domain with a 16-bit
preference value (lower is better) followed by the host name
of the mail exchange. Described in RFC 974, RFC 1035.

NAPTR

Name authority pointer. Described in RFC 2915.

NSAP

A network service access point. Described in RFC 1706.

NS

The authoritative name server for the domain. Described
in RFC 1035.

NSEC

Used in DNSSECbis to securely indicate that RRs with an
owner name in a certain name interval do not exist in a zone
and indicate what RR types are present for an existing name.
Described in RFC 4034.

NXT

Used in DNSSEC to securely indicate that RRs with an owner
name in a certain name interval do not exist in a zone and
indicate what RR types are present for an existing name. Used
in original DNSSEC; replaced by NSEC in DNSSECbis. Described
in RFC 2535.

PTR

A pointer to another part of the domain name space. Described
in RFC 1035.

PX

Provides mappings between RFC 822 and X.400 addresses.
Described in RFC 2163.

RP

Information on persons responsible for the domain. Experimental.
Described in RFC 1183.

RRSIG

Contains DNSSECbis signature data. Described in RFC 4034.

RT

Route-through binding for hosts that do not have their
own direct wide area network addresses. Experimental. Described
in RFC 1183.

SIG

Contains DNSSEC signature data. Used in original DNSSEC;
replaced by RRSIG in DNSSECbis, but still used for SIG(0).
Described in RFCs 2535 and 2931.

SOA

Identifies the start of a zone of authority. Described
in RFC 1035.

SRV

Information about well known network services (replaces
WKS). Described in RFC 2782.

TXT

Text records. Described in RFC 1035.

WKS

Information about which well known network services, such
as SMTP, that a domain supports. Historical.

X25

Representation of X.25 network addresses. Experimental.
Described in RFC 1183.

The following classes of resource
records are currently valid in the DNS:



IN

The Internet.

CH

CHAOSnet, a LAN protocol created at MIT in the mid-1970s.
Rarely used for its historical purpose, but reused for BIND's
built-in server information zones, e.g., version.bind.

HS

Hesiod, an information service developed by MIT's Project
Athena. It is used to share information about various systems
databases, such as users, groups, printers and so on.

The owner name is often implicit, rather than forming an integral part
of the RR. For example, many name servers internally form tree or hash
structures for the name space, and chain RRs off nodes. The remaining
RR parts are the fixed header (type, class, TTL) which is consistent
for all RRs, and a variable part (RDATA) that fits the needs of the resource
being described.

The meaning of the TTL field is a time limit on how long an RR can
be kept in a cache. This limit does not apply to authoritative data in
zones; it is also timed out, but by the refreshing policies for the zone.
The TTL is assigned by the administrator for the zone where the data
originates. While short TTLs can be used to minimize caching, and a zero
TTL prohibits caching, the realities of Internet performance suggest
that these times should be on the order of days for the typical host.
If a change can be anticipated, the TTL can be reduced prior to the change
to minimize inconsistency during the change, and then increased back
to its former value following the change.

The data in the RDATA section of RRs is carried as a combination of
binary strings and domain names. The domain names are frequently used
as "pointers" to other data in the DNS.

Textual expression of
RRs

RRs are represented in binary form in the packets of the DNS protocol,
and are usually represented in highly encoded form when stored in a name
server or resolver. In the examples provided in RFC 1034, a style similar
to that used in master files was employed in order to show the contents
of RRs. In this format, most RRs are shown on a single line, although
continuation lines are possible using parentheses.

The start of the line gives the owner of the RR. If a line begins with
a blank, then the owner is assumed to be the same as that of the previous
RR. Blank lines are often included for readability.

Following the owner, we list the TTL, type, and class of the RR. Class
and type use the mnemonics defined above, and TTL is an integer before
the type field. In order to avoid ambiguity in parsing, type and class
mnemonics are disjoint, TTLs are integers, and the type mnemonic is always
last. The IN class and TTL values are often omitted from examples in
the interests of clarity.

The resource data or RDATA section of the RR are given using knowledge
of the typical representation for the data.

For example, we might show the RRs carried in a message as:




ISI.EDU.

MX

10 VENERA.ISI.EDU.

 

MX

10 VAXA.ISI.EDU

VENERA.ISI.EDU

A

128.9.0.32

 

A

10.1.0.52

VAXA.ISI.EDU

A

10.2.0.27

 

A

128.9.0.33

The MX RRs have an RDATA section which consists of a 16-bit number
followed by a domain name. The address RRs use a standard IP address
format to contain a 32-bit internet address.

The above example shows six RRs, with two RRs at each of three domain
names.

Similarly we might see:




XX.LCS.MIT.EDU.

IN A

10.0.0.44

 

CH A

MIT.EDU. 2420

This example shows two addresses for XX.LCS.MIT.EDU,
each of a different class.

Discussion of MX Records

As described above, domain servers store information as a series of resource
records, each of which contains a particular piece of information about
a given domain name (which is usually, but not always, a host). The simplest
way to think of a RR is as a typed pair of data, a domain name matched
with a relevant datum, and stored with some additional type information
to help systems determine when the RR is relevant.

MX records are used to control delivery of email. The data specified
in the record is a priority and a domain name. The priority controls the
order in which email delivery is attempted, with the lowest number first.
If two priorities are the same, a server is chosen randomly. If no servers
at a given priority are responding, the mail transport agent will fall
back to the next largest priority. Priority numbers do not have any absolute
meaning — they are relevant only respective to other MX records for
that domain name. The domain name given is the machine to which the mail
will be delivered. It must have
an associated address record (A or AAAA) — CNAME is not sufficient.

For a given domain, if there is both a CNAME record and an MX record,
the MX record is in error, and will be ignored. Instead, the mail will
be delivered to the server specified in the MX record pointed to by the
CNAME.

For example:






example.com.

IN

MX

10

mail.example.com.

 

IN

MX

10

mail2.example.com.

 

IN

MX

20

mail.backup.org.

mail.example.com.

IN

A

10.0.0.1

 

mail2.example.com.

IN

A

10.0.0.2

 

Mail delivery will be attempted to mail.example.com and mail2.example.com (in
any order), and if neither of those succeed, delivery to mail.backup.org will
be attempted.

Setting TTLs

The time-to-live of the RR field is a 32-bit integer represented in units
of seconds, and is primarily used by resolvers when they cache RRs. The
TTL describes how long a RR can be cached before it should be discarded.
The following three types of TTL are currently used in a zone file.



SOA

The last field in the SOA is the negative caching TTL. This
controls how long other servers will cache no-such-domain (NXDOMAIN)
responses from you.

The maximum time for negative caching is 3 hours (3h).

$TTL

The $TTL directive at the top of the zone file (before the
SOA) gives a default TTL for every RR without a specific TTL
set.

RR TTLs

Each RR can have a TTL as the second field in the RR, which
will control how long other servers can cache the it.

All of these TTLs default to units of seconds, though units can be explicitly
specified, for example, 1h30m.

Inverse Mapping in IPv4

Reverse name resolution (that is, translation from IP address to name)
is achieved by means of the in-addr.arpa domain
and PTR records. Entries in the in-addr.arpa domain are made in least-to-most
significant order, read left to right. This is the opposite order to the
way IP addresses are usually written. Thus, a machine with an IP address
of 10.1.2.3 would have a corresponding in-addr.arpa name of 3.2.1.10.in-addr.arpa.
This name should have a PTR resource record whose data field is the name
of the machine or, optionally, multiple PTR records if the machine has
more than one name. For example, in the [example.com]
domain:



$ORIGIN

2.1.10.in-addr.arpa

3

IN PTR foo.example.com.

Note

The $ORIGIN lines in
the examples are for providing context to the examples only-they do not
necessarily appear in the actual usage. They are only used here to indicate
that the example is relative to the listed origin.

Other Zone File Directives

The Master File Format was initially defined in RFC 1035 and has subsequently
been extended. While the Master File Format itself is class independent
all records in a Master File must be of the same class.

Master File Directives include $ORIGIN, $INCLUDE,
and $TTL.

The $ORIGIN Directive

Syntax: $ORIGIN domain-name [comment]

$ORIGIN sets the domain
name that will be appended to any unqualified records. When a zone is
first read in there is an implicit $ORIGIN <zone-name>. The
current $ORIGIN is appended
to the domain specified in the $ORIGIN argument
if it is not absolute.

$ORIGIN example.com.
WWW     CNAME   MAIN-SERVER

is equivalent to

WWW.EXAMPLE.COM. CNAME MAIN-SERVER.EXAMPLE.COM.
          

The $INCLUDE Directive

Syntax: $INCLUDE filename [ origin ]
[ comment ]

Read and process the file filename as
if it were included into the file at this point. If origin is
specified the file is processed with $ORIGIN set
to that value, otherwise the current $ORIGIN is
used.

The origin and the current domain name revert to the values they had
prior to the $INCLUDE once
the file has been read.

Note

RFC 1035 specifies that the current origin should be restored after
an $INCLUDE, but it is
silent on whether the current domain name should also be restored.
BIND 9 restores both of them. This could be construed as a deviation
from RFC 1035, a feature, or both.

The $TTL Directive

Syntax: $TTL default-ttl [ comment ]

Set the default Time To Live (TTL) for subsequent records with undefined
TTLs. Valid TTLs are of the range 0-2147483647 seconds.

$TTL is defined in RFC
2308.

BIND Master
File Extension: the $GENERATE Directive

Syntax: $GENERATE range lhs [ttl]
[class] type rhs [comment]

$GENERATE is used to create
a series of resource records that only differ from each other by an iterator. $GENERATE can
be used to easily generate the sets of records required to support sub
/24 reverse delegations described in RFC 2317: Classless IN-ADDR.ARPA delegation.

$ORIGIN 0.0.192.IN-ADDR.ARPA.
$GENERATE 1-2 0 NS SERVER$.EXAMPLE.
$GENERATE 1-127 $ CNAME $.0

is equivalent to

0.0.0.192.IN-ADDR.ARPA NS SERVER1.EXAMPLE.
0.0.0.192.IN-ADDR.ARPA. NS SERVER2.EXAMPLE.
1.0.0.192.IN-ADDR.ARPA. CNAME 1.0.0.0.192.IN-ADDR.ARPA.
2.0.0.192.IN-ADDR.ARPA. CNAME 2.0.0.0.192.IN-ADDR.ARPA.
...
127.0.0.192.IN-ADDR.ARPA. CNAME 127.0.0.0.192.IN-ADDR.ARPA.
        


range

This can be one of two forms: start-stop or start-stop/step.
If the first form is used, then step is set to 1. All of start,
stop and step must be positive.

lhs

lhs describes
the owner name of the resource records to be created. Any single $ (dollar
sign) symbols within the lhs side
are replaced by the iterator value. To get a $ in the output
you need to escape the $ using
a backslash \,
e.g. \$. The $ may
optionally be followed by modifiers which change the offset from
the iterator, field width and base. Modifiers are introduced
by a { immediately
following the $ as ${offset[,width[,base]]}.
For example, ${-20,3,d} subtracts
20 from the current value, prints the result as a decimal in
a zero-padded field of width 3. Available output forms are decimal
(d), octal (o)
and hexadecimal (x or X for
uppercase). The default modifier is ${0,0,d}.
If the lhs is not
absolute, the current $ORIGIN is
appended to the name.

For compatibility with earlier versions, $$ is
still recognized as indicating a literal $ in the output.

ttl

Specifies the time-to-live of the generated records. If not
specified this will be inherited using the normal ttl inheritance
rules.

class and ttl can
be entered in either order.

class

Specifies the class of the generated records. This must match
the zone class if it is specified.

class and ttl can
be entered in either order.

type

At present the only supported types are PTR, CNAME, DNAME,
A, AAAA and NS.

rhs

A domain name. It is processed similarly to lhs.

The $GENERATE directive
is a BIND extension and not part of
the standard zone file format.

BIND 8 does not support the optional TTL and CLASS fields.

Additional File Formats

In addition to the standard textual format, BIND 9 supports the ability
to read or dump to zone files in other formats. The raw format
is currently available as an additional format. It is a binary format representing
BIND 9's internal data structure directly, thereby remarkably improving
the loading time.

For a primary server, a zone file in the raw format
is expected to be generated from a textual zone file by the named-compilezone command.
For a secondary server or for a dynamic zone, it is automatically generated
(if this format is specified by the masterfile-format option)
when named dumps the zone
contents after zone transfer or when applying prior updates.

If a zone file in a binary format needs manual modification, it first
must be converted to a textual form by the named-compilezone command.
All necessary modification should go to the text file, which should then
be converted to the binary form by the named-compilezone command
again.

Although the raw format uses the network
byte order and avoids architecture-dependent data alignment so that it
is as much portable as possible, it is primarily expected to be used inside
the same single system. In order to export a zone file in the raw format
or make a portable backup of the file, it is recommended to convert the
file to the standard textual representation.

Chapter 7. BIND 9
Security Considerations

Access
Control Lists

Access Control Lists (ACLs), are address match lists that you can set up
and nickname for future use in allow-notify, allow-query, allow-recursion, blackhole, allow-transfer,
etc.

Using ACLs allows you to have finer control over who can access your name
server, without cluttering up your config files with huge lists of IP addresses.

It is a good idea to use ACLs, and
to control access to your server. Limiting access to your server by outside
parties can help prevent spoofing and denial of service (DoS) attacks against
your server.

Here is an example of how to properly apply ACLs:

// Set up an ACL named "bogusnets" that will block RFC1918 space
// and some reserved space, which is commonly used in spoofing attacks.
acl bogusnets {
        0.0.0.0/8; 1.0.0.0/8; 2.0.0.0/8; 192.0.2.0/24; 224.0.0.0/3;
        10.0.0.0/8; 172.16.0.0/12; 192.168.0.0/16;
};

// Set up an ACL called our-nets. Replace this with the real IP numbers.
acl our-nets { x.x.x.x/24; x.x.x.x/21; };
options {
  ...
  ...
  allow-query { our-nets; };
  allow-recursion { our-nets; };
  ...
  blackhole { bogusnets; };
  ...
};

zone "example.com" {
  type master;
  file "m/example.com";
  allow-query { any; };
};

This allows recursive queries of the server from the outside unless recursion
has been previously disabled.

For more information on how to use ACLs to protect your server, see the AUSCERT advisory
at:

ftp://ftp.auscert.org.au/pub/auscert/advisory/AL-1999.004.dns_dos

chroot and setuid

On UNIX servers, it is possible to run BIND in
a chrooted environment (using the chroot() function)
by specifying the "-t"
option. This can help improve system security by placing BIND in
a "sandbox", which will limit the damage done if a server is compromised.

Another useful feature in the UNIX version of BIND is
the ability to run the daemon as an unprivileged user ( -u user ).
We suggest running as an unprivileged user when using the chroot feature.

Here is an example command line to load BIND in
a chroot sandbox, /var/named,
and to run named setuid to
user 202:

/usr/local/bin/named -u 202 -t /var/named

The chroot Environment

In order for a chroot environment
to work properly in a particular directory (for example, /var/named),
you will need to set up an environment that includes everything BIND needs
to run. From BIND's point of view, /var/named is
the root of the filesystem. You will need to adjust the values of options
like like directory and pid-file to
account for this.

Unlike with earlier versions of BIND, you will typically not need
to compile named statically
nor install shared libraries under the new root. However, depending on
your operating system, you may need to set up things like /dev/zero, /dev/random, /dev/log,
and /etc/localtime.

Using the setuid Function

Prior to running the named daemon,
use the touch utility (to
change file access and modification times) or the chown utility
(to set the user id and/or group id) on files to which you want BIND to
write.

Note

Note that if the named daemon
is running as an unprivileged user, it will not be able to bind to new
restricted ports if the server is reloaded.

Dynamic
Update Security

Access to the dynamic update facility should be strictly limited. In earlier
versions of BIND, the only way to do this
was based on the IP address of the host requesting the update, by listing
an IP address or network prefix in the allow-update zone
option. This method is insecure since the source address of the update UDP
packet is easily forged. Also note that if the IP addresses allowed by the allow-update option
include the address of a slave server which performs forwarding of dynamic
updates, the master can be trivially attacked by sending the update to the
slave, which will forward it to the master with its own source IP address
causing the master to approve it without question.

For these reasons, we strongly recommend that updates be cryptographically
authenticated by means of transaction signatures (TSIG). That is, the allow-update option
should list only TSIG key names, not IP addresses or network prefixes. Alternatively,
the new update-policy option
can be used.

Some sites choose to keep all dynamically-updated DNS data in a subdomain
and delegate that subdomain to a separate zone. This way, the top-level zone
containing critical data such as the IP addresses of public web and mail
servers need not allow dynamic update at all.

Chapter 8. Troubleshooting

Common
Problems

It's not working; how can
I figure out what's wrong?

The best solution to solving installation and configuration issues is
to take preventative measures by setting up logging files beforehand. The
log files provide a source of hints and information that can be used to
figure out what went wrong and how to fix the problem.

Incrementing
and Changing the Serial Number

Zone serial numbers are just numbers-they aren't date related. A lot of
people set them to a number that represents a date, usually of the form YYYYMMDDRR.
A number of people have been testing these numbers for Y2K compliance and
have set the number to the year 2000 to see if it will work. They then try
to restore the old serial number. This will cause problems because serial
numbers are used to indicate that a zone has been updated. If the serial
number on the slave server is lower than the serial number on the master,
the slave server will attempt to update its copy of the zone.

Setting the serial number to a lower number on the master server than the
slave server means that the slave will not perform updates to its copy of
the zone.

The solution to this is to add 2147483647 (2^31-1) to the number, reload
the zone and make sure all slaves have updated to the new zone serial number,
then reset the number to what you want it to be, and reload the zone again.

Where
Can I Get Help?

The Internet Systems Consortium (ISC)
offers a wide range of support and service agreements for BIND and DHCP servers.
Four levels of premium support are available and each level includes support
for all ISC programs, significant discounts
on products and training, and a recognized priority on bug fixes and non-funded
feature requests. In addition, ISC offers
a standard support agreement package which includes services ranging from
bug fix announcements to remote support. It also includes training in BIND and DHCP.

To discuss arrangements for support, contact info@isc.org or
visit the ISC web page at http://www.isc.org/services/support/ to
read more.

Appendix A. Appendices

Acknowledgments

A Brief
History of the DNS and BIND

Although the "official" beginning of the Domain Name System occurred
in 1984 with the publication of RFC 920, the core of the new system was
described in 1983 in RFCs 882 and 883. From 1984 to 1987, the ARPAnet (the
precursor to today's Internet) became a testbed of experimentation for
developing the new naming/addressing scheme in a rapidly expanding, operational
network environment. New RFCs were written and published in 1987 that modified
the original documents to incorporate improvements based on the working
model. RFC 1034,
"Domain Names-Concepts and Facilities", and RFC 1035, "Domain Names-Implementation
and Specification" were published and became the standards upon which all DNS implementations
are built.

The first working domain name server, called "Jeeves", was written in
1983-84 by Paul Mockapetris for operation on DEC Tops-20 machines located
at the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute
(USC-ISI) and SRI International's Network Information Center (SRI-NIC).
A DNS server for Unix machines, the
Berkeley Internet Name Domain (BIND)
package, was written soon after by a group of graduate students at the
University of California at Berkeley under a grant from the US Defense
Advanced Research Projects Administration (DARPA).

Versions of BIND through 4.8.3 were
maintained by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at UC Berkeley.
Douglas Terry, Mark Painter, David Riggle and Songnian Zhou made up the
initial BIND project team. After that,
additional work on the software package was done by Ralph Campbell. Kevin
Dunlap, a Digital Equipment Corporation employee on loan to the CSRG, worked
on BIND for 2 years, from 1985 to 1987.
Many other people also contributed to BIND development
during that time: Doug Kingston, Craig Partridge, Smoot Carl-Mitchell,
Mike Muuss, Jim Bloom and Mike Schwartz. BIND maintenance
was subsequently handled by Mike Karels and O. Kure.

BIND versions 4.9 and 4.9.1 were released
by Digital Equipment Corporation (now Compaq Computer Corporation). Paul
Vixie, then a DEC employee, became BIND's
primary caretaker. He was assisted by Phil Almquist, Robert Elz, Alan Barrett,
Paul Albitz, Bryan Beecher, Andrew Partan, Andy Cherenson, Tom Limoncelli,
Berthold Paffrath, Fuat Baran, Anant Kumar, Art Harkin, Win Treese, Don
Lewis, Christophe Wolfhugel, and others.

BIND version 4.9.2 was sponsored by
Vixie Enterprises. Paul Vixie became BIND's
principal architect/programmer.

BIND versions from 4.9.3 onward have
been developed and maintained by the Internet Systems Consortium and its
predecessor, the Internet Software Consortium, with support being provided
by ISC's sponsors. As co-architects/programmers, Bob Halley and Paul Vixie
released the first production-ready version of BIND version
8 in May 1997.

BIND development work is made possible
today by the sponsorship of several corporations, and by the tireless work
efforts of numerous individuals.

General DNS Reference
Information

IPv6 addresses (AAAA)

IPv6 addresses are 128-bit identifiers for interfaces and sets of interfaces
which were introduced in the DNS to
facilitate scalable Internet routing. There are three types of addresses: Unicast,
an identifier for a single interface; Anycast,
an identifier for a set of interfaces; and Multicast,
an identifier for a set of interfaces. Here we describe the global Unicast
address scheme. For more information, see RFC 3587.

IPv6 unicast addresses consist of a global
routing prefix
, a subnet identifier,
and an interface identifier.

The global routing prefix is provided by the upstream provider or ISP,
and (roughly) corresponds to the IPv4 network section
of the address range. The subnet identifier is for local subnetting, much
the same as subnetting an IPv4 /16 network into /24 subnets. The interface
identifier is the address of an individual interface on a given network;
in IPv6, addresses belong to interfaces rather than to machines.

The subnetting capability of IPv6 is much more flexible than that of
IPv4: subnetting can be carried out on bit boundaries, in much the same
way as Classless InterDomain Routing (CIDR), and the DNS PTR representation
("nibble" format) makes setting up reverse zones easier.

The Interface Identifier must be unique on the local link, and is usually
generated automatically by the IPv6 implementation, although it is usually
possible to override the default setting if necessary. A typical IPv6 address
might look like: 2001:db8:201:9:a00:20ff:fe81:2b32

IPv6 address specifications often contain long strings of zeros, so the
architects have included a shorthand for specifying them. The double colon
(`::') indicates the longest possible string of zeros that can fit, and
can be used only once in an address.

Bibliography
(and Suggested Reading)

Request for Comments (RFCs)

Specification documents for the Internet protocol suite, including the DNS,
are published as part of the Request for Comments (RFCs) series of technical
notes. The standards themselves are defined by the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF) and the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). RFCs
can be obtained online via FTP at:

ftp://www.isi.edu/in-notes/RFCxxxx.txt

(where xxxx is the number of
the RFC). RFCs are also available via the Web at:

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/.

Bibliography

Standards

[RFC974] C. Partridge. Mail
Routing and the Domain System
.
January
1986.

[RFC1034] P.V. Mockapetris. Domain
Names — Concepts and Facilities
.
November
1987.

[RFC1035] P.
V.
Mockapetris.
Domain
Names — Implementation and Specification
.
November
1987.

Proposed Standards

[RFC2181] R.,
R. Bush
Elz.
Clarifications
to the DNS Specification
.
July
1997.

[RFC2308] M. Andrews. Negative
Caching of DNS Queries
.
March
1998.

[RFC1995] M. Ohta. Incremental
Zone Transfer in DNS
.
August
1996.

[RFC1996] P. Vixie. A
Mechanism for Prompt Notification of Zone Changes
.
August
1996.

[RFC2136] P. Vixie, S. Thomson, Y. Rekhter,
and J. Bound.
Dynamic
Updates in the Domain Name System
.
April
1997.

[RFC2671] P. Vixie. Extension
Mechanisms for DNS (EDNS0)
.
August
1997.

[RFC2672] M. Crawford. Non-Terminal
DNS Name Redirection
.
August
1999.

[RFC2845] P. Vixie, O. Gudmundsson, D. Eastlake, 3rd,
and B. Wellington.
Secret
Key Transaction Authentication for DNS (TSIG)
.
May
2000.

[RFC2930] D. Eastlake, 3rd. Secret
Key Establishment for DNS (TKEY RR)
.
September
2000.

[RFC2931] D. Eastlake, 3rd. DNS
Request and Transaction Signatures (SIG(0)s)
.
September
2000.

[RFC3007] B. Wellington. Secure
Domain Name System (DNS) Dynamic Update
.
November
2000.

[RFC3645] S. Kwan, P. Garg, J. Gilroy, L. Esibov, J. Westhead,
and R. Hall.
Generic
Security Service Algorithm for Secret Key Transaction Authentication
for DNS (GSS-TSIG)
.
October 2003.

DNS Security Proposed
Standards

[RFC3225] D. Conrad. Indicating
Resolver Support of DNSSEC
.
December
2001.

[RFC3833] D. Atkins and R. Austein. Threat
Analysis of the Domain Name System (DNS)
.
August
2004.

[RFC4033] R. Arends, R. Austein, M. Larson, D. Massey,
and S. Rose.
DNS
Security Introduction and Requirements
.
March
2005.

[RFC4044] R. Arends, R. Austein, M. Larson, D. Massey,
and S. Rose.
Resource
Records for the DNS Security Extensions
.
March
2005.

[RFC4035] R. Arends, R. Austein, M. Larson, D. Massey,
and S. Rose.
Protocol
Modifications for the DNS Security Extensions
.
March
2005.

Other Important RFCs About DNS Implementation

[RFC1535] E. Gavron. A
Security Problem and Proposed Correction With Widely Deployed DNS Software.
.
October
1993.

[RFC1536] A. Kumar, J. Postel, C. Neuman, P. Danzig,
and S. Miller.
Common DNS Implementation
Errors and Suggested Fixes
.
October
1993.

[RFC1982] R. Elz and R. Bush. Serial
Number Arithmetic
.
August 1996.

[RFC4074] Y. Morishita and T. Jinmei. Common
Misbehaviour Against DNS Queries
for IPv6 Addresses
.
May 2005.

Resource Record Types

[RFC1183] C.F. Everhart, L.
A.
Mamakos, R. Ullmann,
and P. Mockapetris.
New DNS RR
Definitions
.
October 1990.

[RFC1706] B. Manning and R. Colella. DNS NSAP
Resource Records
.
October 1994.

[RFC2168] R. Daniel and M. Mealling. Resolution
of Uniform Resource Identifiers using the Domain Name System
.
June
1997.

[RFC1876] C. Davis, P. Vixie, T.,
and I. Dickinson.
A
Means for Expressing Location Information in the Domain Name System
.
January
1996.

[RFC2052] A. Gulbrandsen and P. Vixie. A DNS RR
for Specifying the Location of Services.
.
October
1996.

[RFC2163] A. Allocchio. Using
the Internet DNS to Distribute
MIXER Conformant Global Address Mapping
.
January
1998.

[RFC2230] R. Atkinson. Key
Exchange Delegation Record for the DNS
.
October
1997.

[RFC2536] D. Eastlake, 3rd. DSA
KEYs and SIGs in the Domain Name System (DNS)
.
March
1999.

[RFC2537] D. Eastlake, 3rd. RSA/MD5
KEYs and SIGs in the Domain Name System (DNS)
.
March
1999.

[RFC2538] D. Eastlake, 3rd and O. Gudmundsson. Storing
Certificates in the Domain Name System (DNS)
.
March
1999.

[RFC2539] D. Eastlake, 3rd. Storage
of Diffie-Hellman Keys in the Domain Name System (DNS)
.
March
1999.

[RFC2540] D. Eastlake, 3rd. Detached
Domain Name System (DNS) Information
.
March
1999.

[RFC2782] A. Gulbrandsen. P. Vixie. L. Esibov. A
DNS RR for specifying the location of services (DNS SRV)
.
February
2000.

[RFC2915] M. Mealling. R. Daniel. The
Naming Authority Pointer (NAPTR) DNS Resource Record
.
September
2000.

[RFC3110] D. Eastlake, 3rd. RSA/SHA-1
SIGs and RSA KEYs in the Domain Name System (DNS)
.
May
2001.

[RFC3123] P. Koch. A
DNS RR Type for Lists of Address Prefixes (APL RR)
.
June
2001.

[RFC3596] S. Thomson, C. Huitema, V. Ksinant,
and M. Souissi.
DNS Extensions
to support IP version 6
.
October
2003.

[RFC3597] A. Gustafsson. Handling
of Unknown DNS Resource Record (RR) Types
.
September
2003.

DNS and the Internet

[RFC1101] P.
V.
Mockapetris.
DNS Encoding
of Network Names and Other Types
.
April
1989.

[RFC1123] Braden. Requirements
for Internet Hosts - Application and Support
.
October
1989.

[RFC1591] J. Postel. Domain
Name System Structure and Delegation
.
March
1994.

[RFC2317] H. Eidnes, G. de
Groot
, and P. Vixie.
Classless
IN-ADDR.ARPA Delegation
.
March
1998.

[RFC2826] Internet
Architecture Board
.
IAB
Technical Comment on the Unique DNS Root
.
May
2000.

[RFC2929] D. Eastlake, 3rd, E. Brunner-Williams,
and B. Manning.
Domain
Name System (DNS) IANA Considerations
.
September
2000.

DNS Operations

[RFC1033] M. Lottor. Domain
administrators operations guide.
.
November
1987.

[RFC1537] P. Beertema. Common DNS Data
File Configuration Errors
.
October
1993.

[RFC1912] D. Barr. Common DNS Operational
and Configuration Errors
.
February
1996.

[RFC2010] B. Manning and P. Vixie. Operational
Criteria for Root Name Servers.
.
October
1996.

[RFC2219] M. Hamilton and R. Wright. Use
of DNS Aliases for Network
Services.
.
October 1997.

Internationalized Domain Names

[RFC2825] IAB and R. Daigle. A
Tangled Web: Issues of I18N, Domain Names, and the Other Internet
protocols
.
May 2000.

[RFC3490] P. Faltstrom, P. Hoffman,
and A. Costello.
Internationalizing
Domain Names in Applications (IDNA)
.
March
2003.

[RFC3491] P. Hoffman and M. Blanchet. Nameprep:
A Stringprep Profile for Internationalized Domain Names
.
March
2003.

[RFC3492] A. Costello. Punycode:
A Bootstring encoding of Unicode for Internationalized Domain
Names in Applications (IDNA)
.
March
2003.

Other DNS-related
RFCs

Note

Note: the following list of RFCs, although DNS-related,
are not concerned with implementing software.

[RFC1464] R. Rosenbaum. Using
the Domain Name System To Store Arbitrary String Attributes
.
May
1993.

[RFC1713] A. Romao. Tools
for DNS Debugging
.
November
1994.

[RFC1794] T. Brisco. DNS Support
for Load Balancing
.
April 1995.

[RFC2240] O. Vaughan. A
Legal Basis for Domain Name Allocation
.
November
1997.

[RFC2345] J. Klensin, T. Wolf,
and G. Oglesby.
Domain
Names and Company Name Retrieval
.
May
1998.

[RFC2352] O. Vaughan. A
Convention For Using Legal Names as Domain Names
.
May
1998.

[RFC3071] J. Klensin. Reflections
on the DNS, RFC 1591, and Categories of Domains
.
February
2001.

[RFC3258] T. Hardie. Distributing
Authoritative Name Servers via Shared Unicast Addresses
.
April
2002.

[RFC3901] A. Durand and J. Ihren. DNS
IPv6 Transport Operational Guidelines
.
September
2004.

[RFC2352] O. Vaughan. A
Convention For Using Legal Names as Domain Names
.
May
1998.

Obsolete and Unimplemented Experimental RFC

[RFC1712] C. Farrell, M. Schulze, S. Pleitner,
and D. Baldoni.
DNS Encoding
of Geographical Location
.
November
1994.

[RFC2673] M. Crawford. Binary
Labels in the Domain Name System
.
August
1999.

[RFC2874] M. Crawford and C. Huitema. DNS
Extensions to Support IPv6 Address Aggregation and Renumbering
.
July
2000.

Obsoleted DNS Security RFCs

Note

Most of these have been consolidated into RFC4033, RFC4034 and
RFC4035 which collectively describe DNSSECbis.

[RFC2065] D. Eastlake, 3rd and C. Kaufman. Domain
Name System Security Extensions
.
January
1997.

[RFC2137] D. Eastlake, 3rd. Secure
Domain Name System Dynamic Update
.
April
1997.

[RFC2535] D. Eastlake, 3rd. Domain
Name System Security Extensions
.
March
1999.

[RFC3008] B. Wellington. Domain
Name System Security (DNSSEC) Signing Authority
.
November
2000.

[RFC3090] E. Lewis. DNS
Security Extension Clarification on Zone Status
.
March
2001.

[RFC3445] D. Massey and S. Rose. Limiting
the Scope of the KEY Resource Record (RR)
.
December
2002.

[RFC3655] B. Wellington and O. Gudmundsson. Redefinition
of DNS Authenticated Data (AD) bit
.
November
2003.

[RFC3658] O. Gudmundsson. Delegation
Signer (DS) Resource Record (RR)
.
December
2003.

[RFC3755] S. Weiler. Legacy
Resolver Compatibility for Delegation Signer (DS)
.
May
2004.

[RFC3757] O. Kolkman, J. Schlyter,
and E. Lewis.
Domain
Name System KEY (DNSKEY) Resource Record (RR) Secure Entry Point
(SEP) Flag
.
April 2004.

[RFC3845] J. Schlyter. DNS
Security (DNSSEC) NextSECure (NSEC) RDATA Format
.
August
2004.

Internet Drafts

Internet Drafts (IDs) are rough-draft working documents of the Internet
Engineering Task Force. They are, in essence, RFCs in the preliminary stages
of development. Implementors are cautioned not to regard IDs as archival,
and they should not be quoted or cited in any formal documents unless accompanied
by the disclaimer that they are "works in progress." IDs have a lifespan
of six months after which they are deleted unless updated by their authors.

Other Documents About BIND

Bibliography

Paul Albitz and Cricket Liu. DNS and BIND. Copyright © 1998
Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly and Associates.

Manual pages


Table of Contents

dig — DNS
lookup utility
host — DNS
lookup utility
dnssec-keygen — DNSSEC
key generation tool
dnssec-signzone — DNSSEC
zone signing tool
named-checkconf — named
configuration file syntax checking tool
named-checkzone — zone
file validity checking or converting tool
named — Internet
domain name server
rndc — name
server control utility
rndc.conf — rndc
configuration file
rndc-confgen — rndc
key generation tool

Name

dig — DNS lookup utility

Synopsis

dig [@server] [-b address]
[-c class]
[-f filename]
[-k filename]
[-p port#]
[-q name]
[-t type]
[-x addr]
[-y [hmac:]name:key]
[-4] [-6] [name]
[type] [class] [queryopt...]

dig [-h]

dig [global-queryopt...] [query...]

DESCRIPTION

dig (domain information
groper) is a flexible tool for interrogating DNS name servers. It performs
DNS lookups and displays the answers that are returned from the name server(s)
that were queried. Most DNS administrators use dig to
troubleshoot DNS problems because of its flexibility, ease of use and clarity
of output. Other lookup tools tend to have less functionality than dig.

Although dig is normally
used with command-line arguments, it also has a batch mode of operation
for reading lookup requests from a file. A brief summary of its command-line
arguments and options is printed when the -h option
is given. Unlike earlier versions, the BIND9 implementation of dig allows
multiple lookups to be issued from the command line.

Unless it is told to query a specific name server, dig will
try each of the servers listed in /etc/resolv.conf.

When no command line arguments or options are given, will perform an
NS query for "." (the root).

It is possible to set per-user defaults for dig via ${HOME}/.digrc.
This file is read and any options in it are applied before the command
line arguments.

The IN and CH class names overlap with the IN and CH top level domains
names. Either use the -t and -c options
to specify the type and class or use the -q the
specify the domain name or use "IN." and "CH." when looking up these top
level domains.

SIMPLE USAGE

A typical invocation of dig looks
like:

 dig @server name type 

where:

server

is the name or IP address of the name server to query. This can
be an IPv4 address in dotted-decimal notation or an IPv6 address
in colon-delimited notation. When the supplied server argument
is a hostname, dig resolves
that name before querying that name server. If no server argument
is provided, dig consults /etc/resolv.conf and
queries the name servers listed there. The reply from the name server
that responds is displayed.

name

is the name of the resource record that is to be looked up.

type

indicates what type of query is required —
ANY, A, MX, SIG, etc. type can
be any valid query type. If no type argument
is supplied, dig will
perform a lookup for an A record.

OPTIONS

The -b option sets the source IP address
of the query to address. This must
be a valid address on one of the host's network interfaces or "0.0.0.0" or "::".
An optional port may be specified by appending "#<port>"

The default query class (IN for internet) is overridden by the -c option. class is
any valid class, such as HS for Hesiod records or CH for CHAOSNET records.

The -f option makes dig operate
in batch mode by reading a list of lookup requests to process from the
file filename. The file contains
a number of queries, one per line. Each entry in the file should be organised
in the same way they would be presented as queries to dig using
the command-line interface.

If a non-standard port number is to be queried, the -p option
is used. port# is the port number
that dig will send its queries
instead of the standard DNS port number 53. This option would be used to
test a name server that has been configured to listen for queries on a
non-standard port number.

The -4 option forces dig to
only use IPv4 query transport. The -6 option
forces dig to only use IPv6
query transport.

The -t option sets the query type to type.
It can be any valid query type which is supported in BIND9. The default
query type "A", unless the -x option is supplied
to indicate a reverse lookup. A zone transfer can be requested by specifying
a type of AXFR. When an incremental zone transfer (IXFR) is required, type is
set to ixfr=N. The incremental zone transfer
will contain the changes made to the zone since the serial number in the
zone's SOA record was N.

The -q option sets the query name to name.
This useful do distingish the name from
other arguments.

Reverse lookups - mapping addresses to names - are simplified by the -x option. addr is
an IPv4 address in dotted-decimal notation, or a colon-delimited IPv6 address.
When this option is used, there is no need to provide the name, class and type arguments. dig automatically
performs a lookup for a name like 11.12.13.10.in-addr.arpa and
sets the query type and class to PTR and IN respectively. By default, IPv6
addresses are looked up using nibble format under the IP6.ARPA domain.
To use the older RFC1886 method using the IP6.INT domain specify the -i option.
Bit string labels (RFC2874) are now experimental and are not attempted.

To sign the DNS queries sent by dig and
their responses using transaction signatures (TSIG), specify a TSIG key
file using the -k option. You can also specify
the TSIG key itself on the command line using the -y option; hmac is
the type of the TSIG, default HMAC-MD5, name is
the name of the TSIG key and key is
the actual key. The key is a base-64 encoded string, typically generated
by dnssec-keygen(8).
Caution should be taken when using the -y option
on multi-user systems as the key can be visible in the output from ps(1) or
in the shell's history file. When using TSIG authentication with dig,
the name server that is queried needs to know the key and algorithm that
is being used. In BIND, this is done by providing appropriate key and server statements
in named.conf.

QUERY OPTIONS

dig provides a number of
query options which affect the way in which lookups are made and the results
displayed. Some of these set or reset flag bits in the query header, some
determine which sections of the answer get printed, and others determine
the timeout and retry strategies.

Each query option is identified by a keyword preceded by a plus sign
(+). Some keywords set or reset an option.
These may be preceded by the string no to
negate the meaning of that keyword. Other keywords assign values to options
like the timeout interval. They have the form +keyword=value.
The query options are:

+[no]tcp

Use [do not use] TCP when querying name servers. The default behaviour
is to use UDP unless an AXFR or IXFR query is requested, in which
case a TCP connection is used.

+[no]vc

Use [do not use] TCP when querying name servers. This alternate
syntax to +[no]tcp is provided
for backwards compatibility. The "vc" stands for "virtual circuit".

+[no]ignore

Ignore truncation in UDP responses instead of retrying with TCP.
By default, TCP retries are performed.

+domain=somename

Set the search list to contain the single domain somename,
as if specified in a domain directive
in /etc/resolv.conf, and enable search
list processing as if the +search option
were given.

+[no]search

Use [do not use] the search list defined by the searchlist or domain
directive in resolv.conf (if any).
The search list is not used by default.

+[no]showsearch

Perform [do not perform] a search showing intermediate results.

+[no]defname

Deprecated, treated as a synonym for +[no]search

+[no]aaonly

Sets the "aa" flag in the query.

+[no]aaflag

A synonym for +[no]aaonly.

+[no]adflag

Set [do not set] the AD (authentic data) bit in the query. The
AD bit currently has a standard meaning only in responses, not in
queries, but the ability to set the bit in the query is provided
for completeness.

+[no]cdflag

Set [do not set] the CD (checking disabled) bit in the query. This
requests the server to not perform DNSSEC validation of responses.

+[no]cl

Display [do not display] the CLASS when printing the record.

+[no]ttlid

Display [do not display] the TTL when printing the record.

+[no]recurse

Toggle the setting of the RD (recursion desired) bit in the query.
This bit is set by default, which means dig normally
sends recursive queries. Recursion is automatically disabled when
the +nssearch or +trace query
options are used.

+[no]nssearch

When this option is set, dig attempts
to find the authoritative name servers for the zone containing the
name being looked up and display the SOA record that each name server
has for the zone.

+[no]trace

Toggle tracing of the delegation path from the root name servers
for the name being looked up. Tracing is disabled by default. When
tracing is enabled, dig makes
iterative queries to resolve the name being looked up. It will follow
referrals from the root servers, showing the answer from each server
that was used to resolve the lookup.

+[no]cmd

toggles the printing of the initial comment in the output identifying
the version of dig and
the query options that have been applied. This comment is printed
by default.

+[no]short

Provide a terse answer. The default is to print the answer in a
verbose form.

+[no]identify

Show [or do not show] the IP address and port number that supplied
the answer when the +short option
is enabled. If short form answers are requested, the default is not
to show the source address and port number of the server that provided
the answer.

+[no]comments

Toggle the display of comment lines in the output. The default
is to print comments.

+[no]stats

This query option toggles the printing of statistics: when the
query was made, the size of the reply and so on. The default behaviour
is to print the query statistics.

+[no]qr

Print [do not print] the query as it is sent. By default, the query
is not printed.

+[no]question

Print [do not print] the question section of a query when an answer
is returned. The default is to print the question section as a comment.

+[no]answer

Display [do not display] the answer section of a reply. The default
is to display it.

+[no]authority

Display [do not display] the authority section of a reply. The
default is to display it.

+[no]additional

Display [do not display] the additional section of a reply. The
default is to display it.

+[no]all

Set or clear all display flags.

+time=T

Sets the timeout for a query to T seconds.
The default time out is 5 seconds. An attempt to set T to
less than 1 will result in a query timeout of 1 second being applied.

+tries=T

Sets the number of times to try UDP queries to server to T instead
of the default, 3. If T is
less than or equal to zero, the number of tries is silently rounded
up to 1.

+retry=T

Sets the number of times to retry UDP queries to server to T instead
of the default, 2. Unlike +tries,
this does not include the initial query.

+ndots=D

Set the number of dots that have to appear in name to D for
it to be considered absolute. The default value is that defined using
the ndots statement in /etc/resolv.conf