named-checkconf: possible mistake in parsing logging statement

[Ladislav Vobr]

I have seen some posts about the ndc/rndc reload. I have come across the 
problem not exactly with the rndc reload, but with the named-checkconf 
utility which is suppose to clear some kind of errors from the named.conf.

What I have found is that the if you have misspelled channel name in the 
category definition named-checkconf will not inform about it at all, but 
named will refuse to start. I am not saying it should or it shouldn't, 
just informing that running named-checkconf is not enough to clear the 
even some syntax error. ndc/rndc reload will refuse to reload but keeps 
the current named running.

This happen to me, I was running some scripts to reload the named and I 
run named-checkconf before it to ensure the consistency, and because of 
this it didn't reload, which is not the worse but then I have an 
emergency and needed to stop and start without much time to troubleshoot 
seemingly working named.conf file and of course it refused to start 
(which resulted in some very stressfull :-) troubleshooting) but finally 
it was discovered) :-)

example
...............

logging {

         channel mydefault {
                 file "/logs/default.log" versions 20 size 20m;
                 print-time yes;
         };


        category default { mydefaulttttt; };
}

if you mispelled mydefaulttttttt named-checkconf will not recongnize it.

Ladislav