Named goes deaf

[Chris Buxton]

On Jan 9, 2009, at 3:14 AM, Scott Haneda wrote:
> It is getting important to know if you are on Mac OS X, if you are,  
> this may have been solved, and somehow, I overlooked it.
>
> It appears launcd, the cron replacement tool in OS X, can start  
> named before the network interfaces come up. I am not sure.

When this problem occurs, it affects all of named's ports, not just  
the TCP port. Also, Apple's version of BIND is not built from the  
stock source code; they have modified it to request that the kernel  
send a SIGHUP whenever the network configuration changes, to work  
around this very problem.

Unfortunately, their solution requires that named run as root. The  
wrapper script you posted was written as a different way to solve the  
same issue, and it does not rely on named running as root. It just  
waits for a network interface other than the loopback interface to be  
configured before starting named.

We have seen named's TCP port go deaf over time on Mac OS X, without  
any reboot in between. We have not been able to find a reason, but it  
may be that if the port is inactive for a long period of time,  
something may close or block it.

Chris Buxton
Professional Services
Men & Mice