bind 9.1.1 problem

[Brad Knowles]

At 3:47 PM +0100 5/14/01, Tim Jones wrote:

>   i've just build bind 9.1.1 for Solaris 2.6 running on a E250 - 2 x 300Mhz
>   1024Gb memory.
>
>   this server is a cache only recursive server. When under heavy load the
>   server starts dropping loads of dns requests and the "udpInOverflows"
>   value from "netstat -s" starts going through the roof.

	Keep in mind that threading under Solaris 2.6 is broken, and the 
build process suggests that you disable threading.  If you're going 
to be running BINDv9 on Solaris, I strongly suggest using at least 
Solaris 7, if not Solaris 8.

	Moreover, 9.1.2 was released recently, and I'd encourage you to upgrade.

>   At peak times both times these server appear to be serving about 1300
>   queries/sec.

	What kinds of network interfaces are you using?  What kinds of 
network equipment is this plugged into?  Are you using 100Base-TX 
into switched hubs?  If so, have you locked down the NIC and the 
switch port to *FORCE* a particular speed & duplex mode?

	Note that many NICs and switches do not handle auto-negotiation 
well, and even though it may appear that they're working okay, you 
can end up with some pretty severe network problems if you don't 
by-pass the auto-negotiation and force them both to a particular 
speed & duplex mode.


	Also, what are you doing with 1300 queries per second to a server 
like this?  Why not install local caching servers on each machine, so 
that as you add more clients to do DNS traffic, you also add more 
horsepower to resolve that DNS traffic, and your nameservices scale 
linearly with the machines?

>   Also can anybody confirm whether bind 8.2.3 can run on multiple processors
>   under Solaris, it seems that bind 8.2.3 can't spawn threads on to mutliple
>   processors, is this correct. If not how do I make it use all 
>processors a box
>   has to offer, I've used the "-n" option on bind 9.1.1 to this 
>affect but can't
>   find the equivilent on bind 8.2.3.

	BIND 8 is not multi-threaded.  It cannot automatically distribute 
itself across multiple processors, or even make use of multiple 
processors.

	It is possible to run multiple BIND 8 instances on a single 
machine, but they each need to be bound to a different IP address 
and/or port, and you end up treating them as if they were multiple 
virtual nameserver machines.

	This is almost certainly *NOT* what you want, and therefore you 
probably instead want to be looking at the multi-threaded nature of 
BINDv9.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad.knowles at skynet.be>

/*        efdtt.c  Author:  Charles M. Hannum <root at ihack.net>          */
/*       Represented as 1045 digit prime number by Phil Carmody         */
/*     Prime as DNS cname chain by Roy Arends and Walter Belgers        */
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