bind9 question.

[Will Yardley]

In article <a5eeb1$pbd at pub3.rc.vix.com>, C. Maki wrote:

> I recently put together a new OpenBSD 3.0 box. The sole purpose of
> this box was to be a primary name server for a domain. After
> configuring it to my liking, I downloaded and update the ports tree,
> cd'd to /usr/ports/net/bind9/ and typed 'make' and then later 'make
> install'.

you might consider installing from source.
 
> I already have a Red Hat box running bind9, and I've noticed some
> major differences. The Red Hat bind uses named.conf and the process
> when launched spawns some children and runs with a total of 5
> processes.The OpenBSD box uses the older named.boot, and exists as
> only one process.

the second is normal since (for one thing) OpenBSD doesn't support SMP,
and for another, ps works differently. however since it's using
'named.boot', i'm thinking that you're most likely using the version of
named that's in the base install (which is bind 4.x).  you may need to
either remove these binaries by hand, or install over them.  it's
possible that the Makefile in the ports tree has an option to replace
the old version.

since is probably in /usr/sbin and /usr/bin, and the port is probably in
/usr/local/{bin,sbin} the old one is probably earlier in your search
path.  you could build with options to install in /usr and to set
sysconfdir=/etc; ie
../configure --exec-prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc

however when you update your base system, bind might get overwritten.

FreeBSD has an option to specify the location of the named binary, but
it doesn't appear that OpenBSD does (it's not listed in the default
rc.conf file anyway).

i'm not sure about openbsd, but with FreeBSD, you can put:
NO_BIND=	true

to avoid rebuilding bind if you update the base system from source
 
> Can someone tell me if I did something wrong? I can't tell what
> version of named is actually running either, cause the old dig @
> version.bind chaos.txt trick doesn't work on this server.

i think that should work - even with bind 4.x, although 'named -v'
won't, iirc:

(bind 4.x)
rampart% named -v
Usage: named [-d #] [-q] [-r] [-p port[/localport]] [[-b] bootfile]
             [-t directory] [-u (username|uid)] [-g (groupname|gid)]

(bind8/9)
aura% named -v
BIND 9.3.0s20020122

HTH