Recent Problem with BIND 9 under Windows XP

[Vincent Poy]

On 6/27/07, Vinny Abello <vinny at tellurian.com> wrote:
> Vincent Poy wrote:
> > On 6/27/07, Mark Andrews <Mark_Andrews at isc.org> wrote:
> >>> Greetings everyone:
> >>>
> >>> I'm having a problem with starting the ISC BIND service under Windows
> >>> XP SP2 with all the latest MS patches.  I had been running BIND 9 for
> >>> quite some time and every version of BIND9 including beta's, release
> >>> candidates and release versions including 9.4.1 have ran fine until
> >>> recently which I am not sure when since I don't usually monitor if
> >>> BIND was started except after each installation and reboot.  And the
> >>> config file has not been modified.  BIND is owned by the named account
> >>> and is installed in C:\Windows\System32\dns with that directory and
> >>> all directory under it having the named account with full permission
> >>> to read/write.  My system acts as a secondary DNS with named.conf
> >>> located in C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\dns\etc.  When the system tries to
> >>> start ISC BIND service, it shows in the event manager under System as
> >>> a Error 2 events:
> >>>
> >>> Timeout (30000 milliseconds) waiting for the ISC BIND service to connect.
> >>>
> >>> followed by:
> >>>
> >>> The ISC BIND service failed to start due to the following error:
> >>> The service did not respond to the start or control request in a
> >>> timely fashion.
> >>>
> >>> If I try to start the ISC BIND service manually, I will get a pop-up
> >>> window after 5-10 seconds that says and the same two events are in the
> >>> event manager under System as a Error:
> >>>
> >>> Could not start ISC BIND service on Local Computer.
> >>>
> >>> Error 1053: The service did not respond to the start or control
> >>> request in a timely fashion
> >>        Look at the Application log.
> >
> > Already tried that, there is nothing under Application log that
> > relates to named, named is only shown under System log.
>
> Setup logging to files as Windows has no native syslog which is where named
> info usually shows up. I log to files on all our Windows BIND systems. If BIND
> crashes, or won't start, etc... the answer is usually in (one of) the logs.
>
> Remember when you're testing it and it appears to work from the command line, > you are running from a different user account. You could possibly try to run it
> from the command line using the runas utility and specify the credentials that the > service runs under, but I've never tried it and don't know what result you might
> get. It should work in theory though. I would give that a try if logging to file turns > up nothing.

You're right about the lack of syslog in Windows so it will only log a
event rather than detailed like syslog on a Unix box would.  Is there
a way to log to a specific logfile using named.conf in Windows?

Thanks for the reminder about testing named from the command line, it
runs from a different user account.  I tried running it on the command
line as the named user and it appears to run correctly:

27-Jun-2007 19:25:49.161 starting BIND 9.4.1 -g
27-Jun-2007 19:25:49.161 found 2 CPUs, using 2 worker threads
27-Jun-2007 19:25:49.177 loading configuration from 'C:\WINDOWS\system32\dns\etc
\named.conf'
27-Jun-2007 19:25:49.286 listening on IPv4 interface TCP/IP Interface 1, 192.168
.0.120#53
27-Jun-2007 19:25:49.302 listening on IPv4 interface Loopback Interface 2, 127.0
.0.1#53
27-Jun-2007 19:25:49.302 listening on IPv4 interface TCP/IP Interface 3, 192.168
.106.1#53
27-Jun-2007 19:25:49.302 listening on IPv4 interface TCP/IP Interface 4, 192.168
.220.1#53
27-Jun-2007 19:25:49.318 listening on IPv4 interface TCP/IP Interface 5, 208.201
.244.225#53
27-Jun-2007 19:25:49.318 listening on IPv4 interface TCP/IP Interface 6, 192.168
.1.120#53
27-Jun-2007 19:25:49.380 automatic empty zone: 127.IN-ADDR.ARPA
27-Jun-2007 19:25:49.380 automatic empty zone: 254.169.IN-ADDR.ARPA
27-Jun-2007 19:25:49.380 automatic empty zone: 2.0.192.IN-ADDR.ARPA
27-Jun-2007 19:25:49.380 automatic empty zone: 255.255.255.255.IN-ADDR.ARPA
27-Jun-2007 19:25:49.380 automatic empty zone: 0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0
.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.IP6.ARPA
27-Jun-2007 19:25:49.380 automatic empty zone: 1.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0
.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.IP6.ARPA
27-Jun-2007 19:25:49.380 automatic empty zone: D.F.IP6.ARPA
27-Jun-2007 19:25:49.380 automatic empty zone: 8.E.F.IP6.ARPA
27-Jun-2007 19:25:49.380 automatic empty zone: 9.E.F.IP6.ARPA
27-Jun-2007 19:25:49.380 automatic empty zone: A.E.F.IP6.ARPA
27-Jun-2007 19:25:49.380 automatic empty zone: B.E.F.IP6.ARPA
27-Jun-2007 19:25:49.396 command channel listening on 127.0.0.1#953
27-Jun-2007 19:25:49.458 ignoring config file logging statement due to -g option

27-Jun-2007 19:25:49.458 zone 0.0.127.in-addr.arpa/IN: loaded serial 20041019
27-Jun-2007 19:25:49.474 zone 0.168.192.in-addr.arpa/IN: loaded serial 200310180
1
27-Jun-2007 19:25:49.490 zone 1.168.192.in-addr.arpa/IN: loaded serial 200410270
1
27-Jun-2007 19:25:49.490 zone 0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.
0.0.0.0.0.0.IP6.INT/IN: loaded serial 20041019
27-Jun-2007 19:25:49.505 zone DNALOGIC.NET/IN: loaded serial 2003101805
27-Jun-2007 19:25:49.552 running
27-Jun-2007 19:25:49.552 zone 0.168.192.in-addr.arpa/IN: sending notifies (seria
l 2003101801)
27-Jun-2007 19:25:49.552 zone 1.168.192.in-addr.arpa/IN: sending notifies (seria
l 2004102701)
27-Jun-2007 19:25:49.552 zone DNALOGIC.NET/IN: sending notifies (serial 20031018
05)

When I tested it originally, it was running from the vince account on
the command line and the vince account is setup as a Administrator.

One thing that puzzles me is that for the ISC BIND service, if I
change it to run as Local System Account, it will run fine but if I
tried it with named or vince, it will have the problem after 3 seconds
(I timed it this time) that I mentioned when I wrote the original
message about this problem.  So I don't know why it's won't start the
service running as the named user when it worked in the past.

Cheers,
Vince