named not responding

[Mike Evans]

We are running bind v8.3.3-REL on linux 2.4.2-2 (RedHat 7.1)

My problem is that named stops responding to nslookup and will
not accept DDNS updates.  The named process does not appear to
be in a cpu loop.  I can stop it with ndc, but it takes 1-2
minutes, where normally it takes 5-10 seconds.

If I stop syslog then named will start responding and acts like
nothing was wrong.

I need help in figuring out what is happening and how to prevent
this from happening.  This system has been in production for
4 months before this problem started showing up.

I think I am creating my own DOS on named.  We are using this
machine for logging of our PIX logs, we get somewhere around
3.5M records in a 24 hour period.  Syslog looks up the name
for each record being logged.

One problem with my theory is that we have an another box at
different site logging around 6.8M records a day.  This box is
running named 8.2.4-REL on same hardware.  It has no problem
(yet),

I realize that 8.2.4 is an old release and it will be updated.
These are internal servers, so I am not super concerned about
the vunerabilities.

Any suggestions?  Any other information needed?

Mike E