ndc: error: ctl_client: evConnect(fd 3): Connection refused

[John Clement]

I was made aware of a problem this morning with out primary server,
aparently nobody has changed anything (although I'm not ruling that
out), when trying to issue an 'ndc reload' it returns the following:

ndc: error: ctl_client: evConnect(fd 3): Connection refused
ndc: error: cannot connect to command channel (/var/run/ndc)

Named is still running ok, and I've found that stopping and starting it
directly is fine, so the problem appears to be with ndc.  I've already
ensured that /var/run is writeable but that /var/run/ndc doesn't get
created.  I've been reading through some of the archives here and can't
find the answer, only a suggestion that this would happen if named.conf
had error(s) in it.

Our named.conf is 2000 lines so checking through it may take some time.
Has any one seen this error before and how would you suggest I fix it?
'Upgrade to 9!' isn't an option at the moment...

Thanks in advance,

john