Newbie Questions

[dev_null at pubbox.net]

Sorry send the third time because the disorderly character before.(I don't 
know why this mlist doesn't support non-english character well.) 

I downloaded the newest bind and installed it on our system to run for DNS 
Cache.

Here is the version info:

$ ./named -v
BIND 9.3.2-P2

Here is the named.conf:

acl 56lan { 192.168.0.0/24; 127.0.0.1; };

options {
        directory "/home/named";
        listen-on { 192.168.0.210; 127.0.0.1; };
        allow-query { 56lan; };
};

zone "0.0.127.in-addr.arpa" {
        type master;
        file "db.127.0.0";
        notify no;
};

zone "." in {
        type hint;
        file "db.cache";
};


My questions are:

1) Should the root hint zone be always needed? In fact I commented these 
four lines and bind seems work normally too:

//zone "." in {
//        type hint;
//        file "db.cache";
//};

2) The rndc command's help info say:

stop          Save pending updates to master files and stop the server.
halt          Stop the server without saving pending updates.

So, what's the meanings of "pending updates" ?

3) After install bind,why I need to create named.conf & rndc.key by hand? 
Why bind doesn't create the default files for them like Apache?

4) What's the use of port 953 running on localhost?


Thanks in advance for the kind helps.