Running BIND 4.9.3 on Solaris 8

[Kevin Darcy]

If named was looking for named.conf, it's almost certainly a BIND 8 named
(unless somehow a BIND 9 nameserver snuck in there by mistake!) I would
recommend just jumping to BIND 8 -- that's what Sun supports these days,
after all. There's a "named-bootconf" utility in the BIND distribution (and
also in /usr/sbin, as part of SUNWcsu). This can convert your old named.boot
file into an equivalent named.conf file. Be aware, however, that BIND 8.2.3
is somewhat pickier about zonefile syntax and semantics than BIND 4 ever was.
You'll need to put a "$TTL xxxx" (replace "xxxx" with your desired default
TTL value) at the top of all your master files. And watch out for "CNAME and
other data", multiple CNAMEs with the same name, and underscore problems. You
can suppress the underscore problems with the "check-names" option.

If you're not that brave, just get BIND 4 up and running, and hack
/etc/rc2.d/S72inetsvc to look for /etc/named.boot instead of /etc/named.conf.
Or, even kludgier, just "touch /etc/named.conf"...


- Kevin

Greg Chavez wrote:

> Hello, it's nice to be back.  I used to use this list quite frequently
> between 1997 and 1999.  Since then, I've had a little hiatis from BIND,
> but now I'm back and I'm flummoxed - I never knew much beyond BIND 4.9 and
> now I'm stuck with a nasty upgrade conundrum.  Maybe somebody can help me.
>
> I've been given a bizarre project: take a rundown SunOS 5.4 server running
> BIND 4.9.3 and transfer it to a Solaris 8 server.  Unfortunately, I was
> not given the option of refreshing my memory on BIND topics and now I am
> faced with having to complete this project by tomorrow evening.
>
> My initial thinking was to do the follwowing:
>   - install BIND 4.9.3 on the Solaris 8 server (core install, yassp'd)
>   - transfer the old config files over and test
>   - upgrade to 4.9.8 then test
>   - upgrade to 8.2.3 then test
>   - upgrade to 9.1 then test
>   - put new server in production
>
> I never got past the second step.  It doesn't seem that the 4.9.3 install
> overwrote the BIND server that comes with Solaris 8 (SUNWcsu package -
> can't very well remove that one) - in fact, I'm not even sure what
> exact version of BIND it is.  When I rebooted the server after having
> installed 4.9.3, in.named did not start becasue it was looking for
> named.conf - not named.boot!  So obviously Sun ships Soalris 8 with BIND 8
> or 9.  But how to overwrite it?
>
> I'd like to just get 4.9.3 working and then upgrade from there.  If
> anyboyd could point me in the right direction so that I might acheive that
> goal or offer up some alternate strategy, I'm all ears.
>
> I'll be feverishly pouring over documentation and makefiles while I await
> someone's response.  Thanks in advance.
>
> --Greg Chavez