sysquery: nlookup error on ?

[Jim Reid]

>>>>> ">" == unknown  <x-men at tucows.speedme.com> writes:

    >> my dns (bind8) was working fine.. then i don't know probably i
    >> did something and now when i do ndc restart or ndc stop and ndc
    >> start it says its starting and i can't use nslookup 

This is why it's a good idea to put zone files and config files under
version control and apply some basic change management procedures.

    >> and in /var/log/messages i'm geting this

    >> Jul 14 11:20:23 ns1 named[15660]: sysquery: nlookup error on ?

This suggests the name server can't do any lookups for the root zone
which probably means it doesn't know about the root name servers. That
usually happens when there's no zone{} statement for the root zone in
named.conf.