Newbie Questions

[Andy Shellam (Mailing Lists)]

Here's my views in-line below:

dev_null at pubbox.net wrote:
> 1) Should the root hint zone be always needed? In fact I commented these 
> four lines and bind seems work normally too:
>
> //zone "." in {
> //        type hint;
> //        file "db.cache";
> //};
>   
Since bind-9.3.2, I've never needed the root hints on my DNS servers.
> 2) The rndc command's help info say:
>
> stop          Save pending updates to master files and stop the server.
> halt          Stop the server without saving pending updates.
>
> So, what's the meanings of "pending updates" ?
>   
Pending updates, I believe, are when you modify a zone on-the-fly 
(dynamic updates), it saves a journal file but doesn't actually write 
the physical changes to disk immediately.
A pending update has been applied to the zone, but not yet written to 
the zone's file.  A 'stop' will flush the journal to disk, whereas a 
'halt' will cause you to lose un-committed changes.
(I think!)
> 3) After install bind,why I need to create named.conf & rndc.key by hand? 
> Why bind doesn't create the default files for them like Apache?
>   
I personally don't believe there is such thing as a "default" config for 
bind.  For example, are you using it as a caching-only server, as a 
slave for one/multiple zones, as a primary for one/multiple zones?  
There's a long list of uses for bind and your configuration depends on 
your use.  Also regarding the key file, it's specific to the machine, if 
you shipped a standard key file out with bind, a lot of people would 
have the same key file and it'd be a big security risk.
> 4) What's the use of port 953 running on localhost?
>   
I believe this is the port that rndc uses to connect to bind.

Andy Shellam
NetServe Support Team