Bind9(9.3.2p1) "out of memory"

[Barry Margolin]

In article <efg26t$15un$1 at sf1.isc.org>,
 "Adam Young" <adamy at mountaincable.on.ca> wrote:

> Hi Stefan,
> 
> > No idea what BIND does there but i remember there is (was?) a hard limit
> > of 3GB RAM
> > per user process [1|2] in default x86-32 kernels.
> > But as you mentioned you limited max-cache-size to 3GB the question that
> > springs to my mind is: Do you really need such a huge working set for
> > your cache? (Assuming its a caching-only server.)
> > I have been quite lucky with just 380MB on several machines after i used
> > two split processes per machine and disabled threading with bind9.
> > Do you already monitor your servers query-load [3]?
> > I'd say try limiting the max-cache-size to 2 or even 1GB and then look
> > at your graphs and see if it has any bad impact on your users.
> 
> I think I may have found a reason why there are so many queries and why the
> cache is growing so large.
> 
> It looks like it is trying to tag on the domains I've listed in
> /etc/resolv.conf with "search" to either all of the queries, or ones that
> are failing.

That's what the "search" option is for!  Whenever a lookup fails, the 
resolver tries again with these domains appended. 

> 
> Do you know how to stop this? I tried removing them and restarting bind, but
> it still shows the following being queried (ie.):
> 
> Isc.org
> Isc.org.localnet.
> Isc.org.mountaincable.net.

It shouldn't continue searching after a successful lookup.  You need to 
investigate the client, this isn't a problem with the server.

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