restarting BIND 8

[Barry Margolin]

In article <c834df$l83$1 at sf1.isc.org>, Jim Reid <jim at rfc1035.com> 
wrote:

> >>>>> "Barry" == Barry Margolin <barmar at alum.mit.edu> writes:
> 
>     Jeff> If a restart is done, are there any options in named.conf
>     Jeff> that do not get picked up as part of the restart (say,
>     Jeff> forward first to forward only changes)?
> 
>     >> No. Of course not. What could possibly give you the idea that
>     >> it might be anything but that? Think about this. Why would the
>     >> authors of BIND go out of their way to make the server behave
>     >> differently by selectively ignoring parts of the conf file on a
>     >> restart? The man page for ndc -- BTW you should be using rndc
>     >> and BIND9 -- says that a new process is created on a
>     >> restart. When the server is restarted, the current named
>     >> process gets terminated and a new one is created. The new named
>     >> process reads named.conf and does what that tells it to do.
> 
>     Barry> Note, however, that if any command-line arguments were
>     Barry> given to the original named process, they won't be given to
>     Barry> the new one.
> 
> So what? None of those command-line arguments affect in any way how
> the named.conf file gets parsed. Though they may of course instruct
> the name server to use a different named.conf file. There are no
> command-line arguments which can make the name server ignore some
> zone{} statement or options{} clauses or whatever. Which brings us
> back to the OP's question about selective application of the
> named.conf file when the server is (re)started.

You're correct.  But the OP may have been mistaking one effect for 
another.  He might have noticed that after he did "ndc restart", many of 
his options were no longer in effect.  This would happen if he had 
originally run named with a non-default configuration file; "ndc 
restart" will make it revert to the default one.

-- 
Barry Margolin, barmar at alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
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