Problems with 'ndc restart' on BIND 8.3.3

[Mark_Andrews at isc.org]

> 
> Hi Everyone,
> 
> I have compiled and installed BIND 8.3.3 on my servers in response to the
> recent security alerts. However I am now seeing a new behaviour from the ndc
> command due (I think) to the way that ndc has been written in this release.
> 
> In the past I have always been able to use the 'ndc restart' command
> whenever I have updated my primary servers. Now I find that 'ndc restart'
> does not work in the same way any more. So I have had to modify my scripts
> to execute an 'ndc stop' followed by an 'ndc start'.
> 
> The problem is that because I am running these commands from inside shell
> scripts that are executed from cron, I am using the exit code from ndc to
> detect if there were any errors. With BIND 8.3.3 when I use ndc to restart
> named it returns an exit code of 1 and writes the message, "ndc: error: name
> server has not restarted (yet?)" to the console.
> 
> I guess that these changes have been made so that on servers with a large
> number of zones you can execute the 'ndc restart' command and get the
> command prompt back again quite quickly, while the job of restarting named
> proceeds silently in the background. I have verified that if I wait long
> enough, the server will restart successfully.
> 
> So while this message isn't really a request for help (I am quite content to
> stick with my 'ndc stop' / 'ndc start' strategy) I just want to verify that
> the new behaviour that I am seeing is correct. Otherwise it will mean that
> my build of the new code is broken.
> 
> By the way, the code was compiled using GCC 2.95.2 running on servers
> running HP-UX versions B.10.20 and B.11.00
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Ian

	"ndc restart --" is equivalent to the old "ndc restart"

	Mark
--
Mark Andrews, Internet Software Consortium
1 Seymour St., Dundas Valley, NSW 2117, Australia
PHONE: +61 2 9871 4742                 INTERNET: Mark.Andrews at isc.org