big improvement in BIND9 auth-server startup time

[Barry Finkel]

Evan Hunt wrote last July 13:

>-- People who operate big authoritative name servers (particularly with
>large numbers of small zones, e.g., for domain hosting and parking),
>and have had trouble with slow startup, may find this information
>useful:
>
>http://www.isc.org/community/blog/201107/major-improvement-bind-9-startup-performance

I ran some tests yesterday on an Ubuntu Hardy virtual machine.
I was using 9.7.3-P3 and 9.7.4.  There is nothing running
on the box except BIND and the Hardy operating system.

The DNS configuration file has a handful of test zones.
It also has our list of 202,818 spyware/malware zones,
each using the same zone file, which has one NS record and

      @   IN  A  a.b.c.d
      *   IN  A  a.b.c.d

The shutdown time for 9.7.3-P3 was 1:27:11 (1.5 hours).
The timing was from the "./rndc stop" until the "exiting" message.
I did three shutdowns of 9.7.4 with the default

      BIND9_ZONE_TASKS_HINT=8

value.  The shutdown times were 7:17, 7:07, and 7:35.
The shutdown time improved DRAMATICALLY.

I did three start-ups of 9.7.4:

       BZTH   Time
     -------  ----
     default  4:57
     default  5:04
       1020   5:19

I did not see any improvement in start-up time.  The
last start-up did produce the message

      Using 1020 tasks for zone loading

The first two start-ups produced the message

      Using 101 tasks for zone loading

The CHANGES file says that the default is 8.

I need to run some more tests.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Barry S. Finkel
Computing and Information Systems Division
Argonne National Laboratory          Phone:    +1 (630) 252-7277
9700 South Cass Avenue               Facsimile:+1 (630) 252-4601
Building 240, Room 5.B.8             Internet: BSFinkel at anl.gov
Argonne, IL   60439-4828             IBMMAIL:  I1004994