BIND 9.0.0b4

[Andreas Gustafsson]

Announcing the release of BIND version 9 Beta 4.

ISC is proud to announce the public availability of BIND version 9 Beta 4. 
This beta release is not intended for production use.  Most functionality
is present, but some work still remains to be completed.

BIND version 9 beta 4 is available from:

	ftp://ftp.isc.org/isc/bind9/9.0.0b4/bind-9.0.0b4.tar.gz

PGP signature:

	ftp://ftp.isc.org/isc/bind9/9.0.0b4/bind-9.0.0b4.tar.gz.asc

Enclosed is the README file included with the distribution kit.

--------
BIND 9

	BIND version 9 is a major rewrite of nearly all aspects of the
	underlying BIND architecture. This re-architecting of BIND was
	necessitated by the expected demands of:

		- Domain name system growth, particularly in very large
		  zones such as .COM
		- Protocol enhancements necessary to securely query and
		  update zones
		- Protocol enhancements necessary to take advantage of
		  certain architectural features of IP version 6

	These demands implied performance requirements that were not
	necessarily easy to attain with the BIND version 8
	architecture.  In particular, BIND must not only be able to
	run on multi-processor multi-threaded systems, but must take
	full advantage of the performance enhancements these
	architectures can provide. In addition, the underlying data
	storage architecture of BIND version 8 does not lend itself to
	implementing alternative back end databases, such as would be
	desirable for the support of multi-gigabyte zones. As such
	zones are easily foreseeable in the relatively near future,
	the data storage architecture needed revision. The feature
	requirements for BIND version 9 included:

		- Scalability
			Thread safety
		        Multi-processor scalability
		        Support for very large zones

		- Security
		        Support for DNSSEC
		        Support for TSIG
		        Auditability (code and operation)
		        Firewall support (split DNS)

		- Portability

		- Maintainability

		- Protocol Enhancements
		        IXFR, DDNS, Notify, EDNS0
		        Improved standards conformance

		- Operational enhancements
		        High availability and reliability
		        Support for alternative back end databases

		- IP version 6 support
		        IPv6 resource records (A6, DNAME, etc.)
		        Bitstring labels
		        APIs

	BIND version 9 development has been underwritten by the following
	organizations:

	        Sun Microsystems, Inc.
	        Hewlett Packard
	        Compaq Computer Corporation
	        IBM
	        Process Software Corporation
	        Silicon Graphics, Inc.
	        Network Associates, Inc.
	        U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency
		USENIX Association
		Stichting NLnet - NLnet Foundation


BIND 9.0.0b4

	BIND 9.0.0b4 is the fourth public release of BIND 9 code.  It will
	be most useful to advanced users working with IPv6 or DNSSEC.

	BIND 9.0.0b4 has almost all the functionality of the upcoming
        9.0.0 release.  It is not a release candidate for BIND 9.0.0.
        ISC anticipates at least one more beta release between now and 
	the release of BIND 9.0.0.

	ISC does not recommend using BIND 9.0.0b4 for "production"
	services.

	We hope users of BIND 9.0.0b4 will provide feedback and bug fixes.

	There have been many changes since beta 3; the highlights are:

		Stub zones have been implemented.

		Additional configuration options have been implemented, 
		such as "max-cache-ttl" and "max-ncache-ttl".

		More configuration options can be specified separately
		for each view, including the "key" and "server" statements.

		Numerous bugs have been fixed and the code has been cleaned
		up.

	There are a few known bugs:

		The option "query-source * port 53;" will not work as
		expected.  Instead of the wildcard address "*", you need 
		to use an explicit source IP address.

		On some systems, IPv6 and IPv4 sockets interact in
		unexpected ways.  For details, see doc/misc/ipv6.
		If your system supports IPv6 but you do not wish to
		use it, you can avoid these problems by specifying
		"listen-on-v6 { none; };" in the named.conf
		options statement to turn off listening on IPv6
		sockets.

		There are known problems with thread signal handling 
		under SunOS 5.6.
		

	For a detailed list of user-visible changes since beta 3, see
	the CHANGES file.	

	Some of the more significant items that will be implemented or
	enhanced in a future beta are

		Selective forwarding

		Documentation

			Future releases will contain a lot more documentation,
			but a preliminary version of the Administrator's
			Reference Manual is in the doc/arm subdirectory in
			HTML format.  A plain text version will be added
			in a future release.


Building

	BIND 9 currently requires a UNIX system with an ANSI C compiler,
	basic POSIX support, and a good pthreads implementation.

	We've had successful builds and tests on the following systems:

		AIX 4.3
		COMPAQ Tru64 UNIX 4.0D
		FreeBSD 3.4-STABLE
		HP-UX 11
		IRIX64 6.5
		NetBSD-current (with "unproven" pthreads, foreground only)
		Red Hat Linux 6.0, 6.1, 6.2
		Solaris 2.6, 7, 8 (beta)

        We've also had reports of successful builds on the following
        systems, though we do not have tested these platforms ourselves:

                COMPAQ Tru64 UNIX 5 (with IPv6 EAK)

	To build, just

		./configure
		make

        Several environment variables that can be set before running
        configure will affect compilation:

            CC
                The C compiler to use.  configure tries to figure
                out the right one for supported systems.

            CFLAGS
                C compiler flags.  Defaults to include -g and/or -O2
                as supported by the compiler.

            STD_CINCLUDES
                System header file directories.  Can be used to specify
                where add-on thread or IPv6 support is, for example.
                Defaults to empty string.

            STD_CDEFINES
                Any additional preprocessor symbols you want defined.
                Defaults to empty string.

        To build shared libraries, specify "--with-libtool" on the
	configure command line.

	If your operating system has integrated support for IPv6, it
	will be used automatically.  If you have installed KAME IPv6
	separately, use "--with-kame[=PATH]" to specify its location.
	
        To see additional configure options, run "configure --help".

	"make install" will install "named" and the various BIND 9 libraries.
	By default, installation is into /usr/local, but this can be changed
	with the "--prefix" option when running "configure".

	If you're planning on making changes to the BIND 9 source, you
	should also "make depend".  If you're using Emacs, you might find
	"make tags" helpful.

	Building with gcc is not supported, unless gcc is the vendor's usual
	compiler (e.g. the various BSD systems, Linux).

	Parts of the library can be tested by running "make test" from the
	bin/tests subdirectory.


Bug Reports and Mailing Lists

	Bugs reports should be sent to

		bind9-bugs at isc.org

	To join the BIND 9 Users mailing list, send mail to

		bind9-users-request at isc.org

	If you're planning on making changes to the BIND 9 source
	code, you might want to join the BIND 9 Workers mailing list.
	Send mail to

		bind9-workers-request at isc.org


"named" command line options

	-c <config_file>

	-d <debug_level>

	-f				Run in the foreground.

	-g				Run in the foreground and log
					to stderr, ignoring any "logging"
					statement in in the config file.

	-n <number_of_cpus>		

	-t <directory>			Chroot to <directory> before running.

	-u <username>			Run as user <username> after binding
					to privileged ports.

	Use of the "-t" option while still running as "root" doesn't
	enhance security on most systems.  The way chroot() is defined
	allows a process with root privileges to escape the chroot jail.

	The "-u" option is not currently useful on Linux kernels older
	than 2.3.99-pre3.  Linux threads are actually processes sharing a
	common address space.  An unfortunate side effect of this is that
	some system calls, e.g. setuid() that in a typical pthreads
	environment would affect all threads only affect the calling
	thread/process on Linux.  The good news is that BIND 9 uses the
	Linux kernel's capability mechanism to drop all root powers except
	the ability to bind() to a privileged port.  2.3.99-pre3 and later
	kernels allow a process to say that its capabilities should be
	retained after setuid().  If BIND 9 is compiled with 2.3.99-pre3 or
	later kernel .h files, the "-u" option will cause the server to
	run with the specified user id, but it will retain the capability
	to bind() to privileged ports.

	On systems with more than one CPU, the "-n" option should be used
	to indicate how many CPUs there are.


Note to Programmers
	The APIs for the libraries in BIND 9 are not yet frozen.
	We expect the existing library interfaces in the release to be
	quite stable, however, and unless we've specifically indicated that
	an interface is temporary, we don't anticipate major changes in
	future releases.