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Copyright (C) 2000 Internet Software Consortium.
See COPYRIGHT in the source root or http://isc.org/copyright.html for terms.
$Id: Bv9ARM.txt,v 1.13 2000/08/16 00:01:51 stahl Exp $
BIND 9 Administrator Reference Manual
July 2000
Copyright (c) 2000 Internet Software Consortium
--------------------------------------------------------------------
BIND 9 ADMINISTRATOR REFERENCE MANUAL
Table of Contents
Section 1 : Introduction
1.1 Scope of Document
1.2 Organization of This Document
1.3 Conventions Used in This Document
1.4 Discussion of Domain Name System (DNS) Basics and BIND
1.4.1 Nameservers
1.4.2 Types of Zones
1.4.3 Servers
1.4.3.1 Master Server
1.4.3.2 Slave Server
1.4.3.3 Caching Only Server
1.4.3.4 Forwarding Server
1.4.3.5 Stealth Server
Section 2 : BIND Resource Requirements
2.1 Hardware requirements
2.2 CPU Requirements
2.3 Memory Requirements
2.4 Nameserver Intensive Environment Issues
2.5 Supported Operating Systems
Section 3 : Nameserver Configuration
3.1 Sample Configurations
3.1.1 A Caching-only Nameserver
3.1.2 An Authoritative-only Nameserver
3.2 Load Balancing
3.3 Notify
3.4 Nameserver Operations
3.4.1 Tools for Use With the Nameserver Daemon
3.4.1.1 Diagnostic Tools
3.4.1.2 Administrative Tools
3.4.2 Signals
Section 4 : Advanced Concepts
4.1 Dynamic Update
4.2 Incremental Zone Transfers (IXFR)
4.3 Split DNS
4.4 TSIG
4.4.1 Generate Shared Keys for Each Pair of Hosts
4.4.1.1 Automatic Generation
4.4.1.2 Manual Generation
4.4.2 Copying the Shared Secret to Both Machines
4.4.3 Informing the Servers of the Key's Existence
4.4.4 Instructing the Server to Use the Key
4.4.5 TSIG Key Based Access Control
4.4.6 Errors
4.5 TKEY
4.6 SIG(0)
4.7 DNSSEC
4.7.1 Generating Keys
4.7.2 Creating a Keyset
4.7.3 Signing the Child's Keyset
4.7.4 Signing the Zone
4.7.5 Configuring Servers
4.8 IPv6 Support in BIND 9
4.8.1 Address Lookups Using AAAA Records
4.8.2 Address Lookups Using A6 Records
4.8.2.1 A6 Chains
4.8.2.2 A6 Records for DNS Servers
4.8.3 Address to Name Lookups Using Nibble Format
4.8.4 Address to Name Lookups Using Bitstring Format
4.8.5 Using DNAME for Delegation of IPv6 Reverse Addresses
Section 5 : The BIND 9 Lightweight Resolver
5.1 The Lightweight Resolver Library
5.2 Running a Resolver Daemon
Section 6 : BIND 9 Configuration Reference
6.1 Configuration File Element
6.1.1 Address Match Lists
6.1.1.1 Syntax
6.1.1.2 Definition and Usage
6.1.2 Comment Syntax
6.1.2.1 Syntax
6.1.2.2 Definition and Usage
6.2 Configuration File Grammar
6.2.1 acl Statement Grammar
6.2.2 acl Statement Definition and Usage
6.2.3 controls Statement Grammar
6.2.4 controls Statement Definition and Usage
6.2.5 include Statement Grammar
6.2.6 include Statement Definition and Usage
6.2.7 key Statement Grammar
6.2.8 key Statement Definition and Usage
6.2.9 logging Statement Grammar
6.2.10 logging Statement Definition and Usage
6.2.10.1 The channel Phrase
6.2.10.2 The category Phrase
6.2.11 options Statement Grammar
6.2.12 options Statement Definition and Usage
6.2.12.1 Boolean Options
6.2.12.2 Forwarding
6.2.12.3 Name Checking
6.2.12.4 Access Control
6.2.12.5 Interfaces
6.2.12.6 Query Address
6.2.12.7 Zone Transfers
6.2.12.8 Resource Limits
6.2.12.9 Periodic Task Intervals
6.2.12.10 Topology
6.2.12.11 The sortlist Statement
6.2.12.12 RRset Ordering
6.2.12.13 Tuning
6.2.12.14 Deprecated Features
6.2.13 server Statement Grammar
6.2.14 server Statement Definition and Usage
6.2.15 trusted-keys Statement Grammar
6.2.16 trusted-keys Statement Definition and Usage
6.2.17 view Statement Grammar
6.2.18 view Statement Definition and Usage
6.2.19 zone Statement Grammar
6.2.20 zone Statement Definition and Usage
6.2.20.1 Zone Types
6.2.20.2 Class
6.2.20.3 Zone Options
6.2.20.4 Dynamic Update Policies
6.3 Zone File
6.3.1 Types of Resource Records and When to Use Them
6.3.1.1 Resource Records
6.3.1.2 Textual expression of RRs
6.3.2 Discussion of MX Records
6.3.3 Setting TTLs
6.3.4 Inverse Mapping in IPv4
6.3.5 Other Zone File Directives
6.3.5.1 The $ORIGIN Directive
6.3.5.2 The $INCLUDE Directive
6.3.5.3 The $TTL Directive
6.3.6 BIND Master File Extension: the $GENERATE Directive
6.3.7 Signals 69
Section 7 : BIND 9 Security Considerations
7.1 Access Control Lists
7.2 chroot and setuid (for UNIX servers)
7.2.1 The chroot Environment
7.2.2 Using the setuid Function
7.3 Dynamic Updates
Section 8 : Troubleshooting
8.1 Common Problems
8.1.1 It's not working; how can I figure out what's wrong?
8.2 Incrementing and Changing the Serial Number
8.3 Where Can I Get Help?
Appendix A: Acknowledgements
A.1 A Brief History of the DNS and BIND
Appendix B: Historical DNS Information
B.1 Classes of Resource Records
B.1.1 HS = hesiod
B.1.2 CH = chaos
Appendix C: General DNS Reference Information
C.1 IPv6 addresses (A6)
Appendix D: Bibliography (and Suggested Reading)
D.1 Request for Comments (RFCs)
D.1.1 Standards
D.1.2 Proposed Standards
D.1.3 Proposed Standards Still Under Development
D.1.4 Other Important RFCs About DNS Implementation
D.1.5 Resource Record Types
D.1.6 DNS and the Internet
D.1.7 DNS Operations
D.1.8 Other DNS-related RFCs
D.1.9 Obsolete and Unimplemented Experimental RRs
D.2 Internet Drafts
D.3 Other BIND Documents
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Section 1. Introduction
The Internet Domain Name System (DNS) consists of the syntax to specify the
names of entities in the Internet in a hierarchical manner, the rules used
for delegating authority over names, and the system implementation that
actually maps names to Internet addresses. DNS data is maintained in a group
of distributed hierarchical databases.
1.1 Scope of Document
The Berkeley Internet Name Domain (BIND) implements an Internet nameserver
for a number of operating systems. This document provides basic information
about the installation and care of the Internet Software Consortium (ISC)
BIND version 9 software package for system administrators.
1.2 Organization of This Document
In this document, Section 1 introduces the basic DNS and BIND concepts.
Section 2 describes resource requirements for running BIND in various
environments. Information in Section 3 is task-oriented in its presentation
and is organized functionally, to aid in the process of installing the
BIND 9 software. The task-oriented section is followed by Section 4, which
contains more advanced concepts that the system administrator may need for
implementing certain options. Section 5 describes the BIND 9 lightweight
resolver. The contents of Section 6 are organized as in a reference manual
to aid in the ongoing maintenance of the software. Section 7 addresses
security considerations, and Section 8 contains troubleshooting help. The
main body of the document is followed by several Appendices which contain
useful reference information, such as a Bibliography and historic
information related to BIND and the Domain Name System.
1.3 Conventions Used in This Document
In this document, we use the following general typographic conventions:
To describe: We use the style:
a pathname, filename, URL, hostname,
mailing list name, or new term or conceptItalic
literal user input Fixed Width Bold
variable user input Fixed Width Italic
program output Fixed Width
The following conventions are used in descriptions of the BIND configuration
file:
To describe: We use the style:
keywords Sans Serif Bold
variables Sans Serif Italic
"meta-syntactic" information (within brackets
when optional) Fixed Width Italic
Command line input Fixed Width Bold
Program output Fixed Width
Optional input Text is enclosed in square
brackets
1.4 Discussion of Domain Name System (DNS) Basics and BIND
The purpose of this document is to explain the installation and basic upkeep
of the BIND software package, and we begin by reviewing the fundamentals of
the domain naming system as they relate to BIND. BIND consists of a
nameserver (or "daemon") called named and a resolver library. The BIND
server runs in the background, servicing queries on a well known network
port. The standard port for the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) and
Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), usually port 53, is specified in
/etc/services. The resolver is a set of routines residing in a system
library that provides the interface that programs can use to access the
domain name services.
1.4.1 Nameservers
A nameserver (NS) is a program that stores information about named resources
and responds to queries from programs called resolvers which act as client
processes. The basic function of an NS is to provide information about
network objects by answering queries.
With the nameserver, the network can be broken into a hierarchy of domains.
The name space is organized as a tree according to organizational or
administrative boundaries. Each node of the tree, called a domain, is given
a label. The name of the domain is the concatenation of all the labels of
the domains from the root to the current domain. This is represented in
written form as a string of labels listed from right to left and separated
by dots. A label need only be unique within its domain. The whole name space
is partitioned into areas called zones, each starting at a domain and
extending down to the leaf domains or to domains where other zones start.
Zones usually represent administrative boundaries. For example, a domain
name for a host at the company Example, Inc. would be:
ourhost.example.com
where com is the top level domain to which ourhost.example.com belongs,
example is a subdomain of com, and ourhost is the name of the host.
The specifications for the domain nameserver are defined in the RFC
1034, RFC 1035 and RFC 974. These documents can be found in
/usr/src/etc/named/doc in 4.4BSD or are available via File Transfer
Protocol (FTP) from ftp://www.isi.edu/in-notes/ or via the Web at
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/. (See Appendix C for complete information
on finding and retrieving RFCs.) It is also recommended that you read
the related man pages: named and resolver.
1.4.2 Types of Zones
As we stated previously, a zone is a point of delegation in the DNS tree. A
zone consists of those contiguous parts of the domain tree for which a
domain server has complete information and over which it has authority. It
contains all domain names from a certain point downward in the domain tree
except those which are delegated to other zones. A delegation point has one
or more NS records in the parent zone, which should be matched by equivalent
NS records at the root of the delegated zone.
To properly operate a nameserver, it is important to understand the
difference between a zone and a domain.
For instance, consider the example.com domain which includes names such as
host.aaa.example.com and host.bbb.example.com even though the example.com
zone includes only delegations for the aaa.example.com and bbb.example.com
zones. A zone can map exactly to a single domain, but could also include
only part of a domain, the rest of which could be delegated to other
nameservers. Every name in the DNS tree is a domain, even if it is terminal
, that is, has no subdomains. Every subdomain is a domain and every domain
except the root is also a subdomain. The terminology is not intuitive and we
suggest that you read RFCs 1033, 1034 and 1035 to gain a complete
understanding of this difficult and subtle topic.
Though BIND is a Domain Nameserver, it deals primarily in terms of zones.
The master and slave declarations in the named.conf file specify zones, not
domains. When you ask some other site if it is willing to be a slave server
for your domain, you are actually asking for slave service for some
collection of zones.
Each zone will have one primary master (also called primary) server which
loads the zone contents from some local file edited by humans or perhaps
generated mechanically from some other local file which is edited by humans.
There there will be some number of slave (also called secondary) servers,
which load the zone contents using the DNS protocol (that is, the secondary
servers will contact the primary and fetch the zone data using TCP). This
set of servers--the primary and all of its secondaries--should be listed in
the NS records in the parent zone and will constitute a delegation. This
set of servers must also be listed in the zone file itself, usually under
the @ name which indicates the top level or root of the current zone. You
can list servers in the zone's top-level @ NS records that are not in the
parent's NS delegation, but you cannot list servers in the parent's
delegation that are not present in the zone's @.
Any servers listed in the NS records must be configured as authoritative for
the zone. A server is authoritative for a zone when it has been configured
to answer questions for that zone with authority, which it does by setting
the "authoritative answer" (AA) bit in reply packets. A server may be
authoritative for more than one zone. The authoritative data for a zone is
composed of all of the Resource Records (RRs)--the data associated with
names in a tree-structured name space--attached to all of the nodes from the
top node of the zone down to leaf nodes or nodes above cuts around the
bottom edge of the zone.
Adding a zone as a type master or type slave will tell the server to answer
questions for the zone authoritatively. If the server is able to load the
zone into memory without any errors it will set the AA bit when it replies
to queries for the zone. See RFCs 1034 and 1035 for more information about
the AA bit.
1.4.3 Servers
A DNS server can be master for some zones and slave for others or can be
only a master, or only a slave, or can serve no zones and just answer
queries via its cache. Master servers are often also called primaries and
slave servers are often also called secondaries. Both master/primary and
slave/secondary servers are authoritative for a zone.
All servers keep data in their cache until the data expires, based on a Time
To Live (TTL) field which is maintained for all resource records.
1.4.3.1 Master Server
The primary master server is the ultimate source of information about a
domain. The primary master is an authoritative server configured to be the
source of zone transfer for one or more secondary servers. The primary
master server obtains data for the zone from a file on disk.
1.4.3.2 Slave Server
A slave server, also called a secondary server, is an authoritative server
that uses zone transfers from the primary master server to retrieve the zone
data. Optionally, the slave server obtains zone data from a cache on disk.
Slave servers provide necessary redundancy. All secondary/slave servers are
named in the NS RRs for the zone.
1.4.3.3 Caching Only Server
Some servers are caching only servers. This means that the server caches
the information that it receives and uses it until the data expires. A
caching only server is a server that is not authoritative for any zone. This
server services queries and asks other servers, who have the authority, for
the information it needs.
1.4.3.4 Forwarding Server
Instead of interacting with the nameservers for the root and other domains,
a forwarding server always forwards queries it cannot satisfy from its
authoritative data or cache to a fixed list of other servers. The forwarded
queries are also known as recursive queries, the same type as a client
would send to a server. There may be one or more servers forwarded to, and
they are queried in turn until the list is exhausted or an answer is found.
A forwarding server is typically used when you do not wish all the servers
at a given site to interact with the rest of the Internet servers. A typical
scenario would involve a number of internal DNS servers and an Internet
firewall. Servers unable to pass packets through the firewall would forward
to the server that can do it, and that server would query the Internet DNS
servers on the internal server's behalf. An added benefit of using the
forwarding feature is that the central machine develops a much more complete
cache of information that all the workstations can take advantage of.
There is no prohibition against declaring a server to be a forwarder even
though it has master and/or slave zones as well; the effect will still be
that anything in the local server's cache or zones will be answered, and
anything else will be forwarded using the forwarders list.
1.4.3.5 Stealth Server
A stealth server is a server that answers authoritatively for a zone, but is
not listed in that zone's NS records. Stealth servers can be used as a way
to centralize distribution of a zone, without having to edit the zone on a
remote nameserver. Where the master file for a zone resides on a stealth
server in this way, it is often referred to as a "hidden primary"
configuration. Stealth servers can also be a way to keep a local copy of a
zone for rapid access to the zone's records, even if all "official"
nameservers for the zone are inaccessible.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Section 2. BIND Resource Requirements
2.1 Hardware requirements
DNS hardware requirements have traditionally been quite modest. For many
installations, servers that have been pensioned off from active duty have
performed admirably as DNS servers.
The DNSSEC and IPv6 features of BIND 9 may prove to be quite CPU intensive
however, so organizations that make heavy use of these features may wish to
consider larger systems for these applications. BIND 9 is now fully
multithreaded, allowing full utilization of multiprocessor systems for
installations that need it.
2.2 CPU Requirements
CPU requirements for BIND 9 range from i486-class machines for serving of
static zones without caching, to enterprise-class machines if you intend to
process many dynamic updates and DNSSEC signed zones, serving many thousands
of queries per second.
2.3 Memory Requirements
The memory of the server has to be large enough to fit the cache and zones
loaded off disk. Future releases of BIND 9 will provide methods to limit the
amount of memory used by the cache, at the expense of reducing cache hit
rates and causing more DNS traffic. It is still good practice to have enough
memory to load all zone and cache data into memory--unfortunately, the best
way to determine this for a given installation is to watch the nameserver in
operation. After a few weeks the server process should reach a relatively
stable size where entries are expiring from the cache as fast as they are
being inserted. Ideally, the resource limits should be set higher than this
stable size.
2.4 Nameserver Intensive Environment Issues
For nameserver intensive environments, there are two alternative
configurations that may be used. The first is where clients and any
second-level internal nameservers query a main nameserver, which has enough
memory to build a large cache. This approach minimizes the bandwidth used by
external name lookups. The second alternative is to set up second-level
internal nameservers to make queries independently. In this configuration,
none of the individual machines needs to have as much memory or CPU power as
in the first alternative, but this has the disadvantage of making many more
external queries, as none of the nameservers share their cached data.
2.5 Supported Operating Systems
ISC BIND 9 compiles and runs on the following operating systems:
IBM AIX 4.3
Compaq Digital/Tru64 UNIX 4.0D
HP HP-UX 11
IRIX64 6.5
Red Hat Linux 6.0, 6.1
Sun Solaris 2.6, 7, 8 (beta)
FreeBSD 3.4-STABLE
NetBSD-current with "unproven" pthreads
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Section 3. Nameserver Configuration
In this section we provide some suggested configurations along with
guidelines for their use. We also address the topic of reasonable option
setting.
3.1 Sample Configurations
3.1.1 A Caching-only Nameserver
The following sample configuration is appropriate for a caching-only name
server for use by clients internal to a corporation. All queries from
outside clients are refused.
// Two corporate subnets we wish to allow queries from.
acl "corpnets" { 192.168.4.0/24; 192.168.7.0/24; };
options {
directory "/etc/namedb"; // Working directory
pid-file "named.pid"; // Put pid file in working dir
allow-query { "corpnets "; };
};
// Root server hints
zone "." { type hint; file "root.hint"; };
// Provide a reverse mapping for the loopback address 127.0.0.1
zone "0.0.127.in-addr.arpa" {
type master;
file "localhost.rev";
notify no;
};
3.1.2 An Authoritative-only Nameserver
This sample configuration is for an authoritative-only server that is the
master server for " example.com " and a slave for the subdomain "
eng.example.com ".
options {
directory "/etc/namedb"; // Working directory
pid-file "named.pid"; // Put pid file in working dir
allow-query { any; }; // This is the default
recursion no; // Do not provide recursive service
};
// Root server hints
zone "." { type hint; file "root.hint"; };
// Provide a reverse mapping for the loopback address 127.0.0.1
zone "0.0.127.in-addr.arpa" {
type master;
file "localhost.rev";
notify no;
};
// We are the master server for example.com
zone "example.com" {
type master;
file "example.com.db";
// IP addresses of slave servers allowed to transfer example.com
allow-transfer {
192.168.4.14;
192.168.5.53;
};
};
// We are a slave server for eng.example.com
zone "eng.example.com" {
type slave;
file "eng.example.com.bk";
// IP address of eng.example.com master server
masters { 192.168.4.12; };
};
3.2 Load Balancing
Primitive load balancing can be achieved in DNS using multiple A records for
one name.
For example, if you have three WWW servers with network addresses of
10.0.0.1, 10.0.0.2 and 10.0.0.3, a set of records such as the following
means that clients will connect to each machine one third of the time:
NameTTL CLASS TYPE Resource Record (RR) Data
www 600 IN A 10.0.0.1
600 IN A 10.0.0.2
600 IN A 10.0.0.3
When a resolver queries for these records, BIND will rotate them and respond
to the query with the records in a different order. In the example above,
clients will randomly receive records in the order 1, 2, 3; 2, 3, 1; and 3,
1, 2. Most clients will use the first record returned and discard the rest.
For more detail on ordering responses, check the rrset-order substatement in
the options statement under RRset Ordering. This substatement is not
supported in BIND 9, and only the ordering scheme described above is
available.
3.3 Notify
DNS Notify is a mechanism that allows master nameservers to notify their
slave servers of changes to a zone's data. In response to a NOTIFY from a
master server, the slave will check to see that its version of the zone is
the current version and, if not, initiate a transfer.
DNS Notify is fully documented in RFC 1996. See also the description of the
zone option also-notify under Zone Transfers. More information about notify
can be found under Boolean Options.
3.4 Nameserver Operations
3.4.1 Tools for Use With the Nameserver Daemon
There are several indispensable diagnostic, administrative and monitoring
tools available to the system administrator for controlling and debugging
the nameserver daemon. We describe several in this section
3.4.1.1 Diagnostic Tools
dig
The domain information groper ( dig) is a command line tool that can be
used to gather information from the Domain Name System servers. Dig has two
modes: simple interactive mode for a single query, and batch mode which
executes a query for each in a list of several query lines. All query
options are accessible from the command line.
Usage
dig [@server] domain [<query-type>] [<query-class>]
[+<query-option>] [-<dig-option>] [%comment]
The usual simple use of dig will take the form
dig @server domain query-type query-class
For more information and a list of available commands and options, see the
dig man page.
host
The host utility provides a simple DNS lookup using a command-line interface
for looking up Internet hostnames. By default, the utility converts between
host names and Internet addresses, but its functionality can be extended
with the use of options.
Usage
host [-aCdlrTwv] [-c class] [-N ndots] [-t type]
[-W timeout] [-R retries] hostname [server]
For more information and a list of available commands and options, see the
host man page.
nslookup
nslookup is a program used to query Internet domain nameservers. nslookup
has two modes: interactive and non-interactive. Interactive mode allows the
user to query nameservers for information about various hosts and domains or
to print a list of hosts in a domain. Non-interactive mode is used to print
just the name and requested information for a host or domain.
Usage
nslookup [-option ...] [host-to-find | -[server]]
Interactive mode is entered when no arguments are given (the default
nameserver will be used) or when the first argument is a hyphen ('-') and
the second argument is the host name or Internet address of a nameserver.
Non-interactive mode is used when the name or Internet address of the host
to be looked up is given as the first argument. The optional second argument
specifies the host name or address of a nameserver.
The options listed under the "set" command (see the nslookup man page for
details) can be specified in the .nslookuprc file in the user's home
directory if they are listed one per line. Options can also be specified on
the command line if they precede the arguments and are prefixed with a
hyphen. For example, to change the default query type to host information,
and the initial time-out to 10 seconds, type:
nslookup -query=hinfo -timeout=10
For more information and a list of available commands and options, see the
nslookup man page.
Due to its arcane user interface and frequently inconsistent behavior, we do
not recommend the use of nslookup. Use dig instead.
3.4.1.2 Administrative Tools
Administrative tools play an integral part in the management of a server.
rndc
The remote name daemon control (rndc) program allows the system
administrator to control the operation of a nameserver. If you run
rndc without any options it will display a usage message as follows:
Usage: rndc [-c config] [-s server] [-p port] [-y key] command [command ...]
command is one of the following for named:
*status Display ps(1) status of named.
*dumpdb Dump database and cache to /var/tmp/named_dump.db.
reload Reload configuration file and zones.
*stats Dump statistics to /var/tmp/named.stats.
*trace Increment debugging level by one.
*notrace Set debugging level to 0.
*querylog Toggle query logging.
*stop Stop the server.
*restart Restart the server.
* == not yet implemented
As noted above, "reload" is the only command available for BIND 9.0.0.
The other commands, and more, are planned to be implemented for future
releases.
A configuration file is required, since all communication with the
server is authenticated with digital signatures that rely on a shared
secret, and there is no way to provide that secret other than with a
configuration file. The default location for the rndc configuration
file is /etc/rndc.conf, but an alternate location can be specified
with the "-c" option.
The format of the configuration file is similar to that of named.conf, but
limited to only three statements, the options{}, key{} and server{}
statements. These statements are what associate the secret keys to the
servers with which they are meant to be shared. The order of statements is not
significant.
The options{} statement has two clauses: default-server and
default-key. default-server takes a host name or address argument and
represents the server that will be contacted if no "-s" option is
provided on the command line. default-key takes the name of the key
as its argument, as defined by a key{} statement. In the future a
default-port clause will be added to specify the port to which rndc
should connect.
The key{} statement names a key with its string argument. The string is
required by the server to be a valid domain name, though it need not
actually be hierarchical; thus, a string like "rndc_key" is a valid name.
The key{} statement has two clauses: algorithm and secret. While the
configuration parser will accept any string as the argument to algorithm,
currently only the string "hmac-md5" has any meaning. The secret is a
base-64 encoded string, typically generated with either dnssec-keygen or
mmencode.
The server{} statement uses the key clause to associate a key{}-defined key
with a server. The argument to the server{} statement is a host name or
address (addresses must be double quoted). The argument to the key clause
is the name of key as defined by the key{} statement. A port clause will
be added to a future release to specify the port to which rndc should
connect on the given server.
A sample minimal configuration file is as follows:
key rndc_key {
algorithm "hmac-md5";
secret "c3Ryb25nIGVub3VnaCBmb3IgYSBtYW4gYnV0IG1hZGUgZm9yIGEgd29tYW4K";
};
options {
default-server localhost;
default-key rndc_key;
};
This file, if installed as /etc/rndc.conf, would allow the command:
$ rndc reload
to connect to 127.0.0.1 port 953 and cause the nameserver to reload,
if a nameserver on the local machine were running with following controls
statements:
controls {
inet 127.0.0.1 allow { localhost; } keys { rndc_key; };
};
and it had an identical key statement for rndc_key.
3.4.2 Signals
Certain UNIX signals cause the name server to take specific actions, as
described in the following table. These signals can be sent using the kill
command.
SIGHUP Causes the server to read named.conf and reload the database.
SIGTERM Causes the server to clean up and exit.
SIGINT Causes the server to clean up and exit.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Section 4. Advanced Concepts
4.1 Dynamic Update
Dynamic update is the term used for the ability under certain specified
conditions to add, modify or delete records or RRsets in the master zone
files. Dynamic update is fully described in RFC 2136.
Dynamic update is enabled on a zone-by-zone basis, by including an
allow-update or update-policy clause in the zone statement.
Updating of secure zones (zones using DNSSEC) is modelled after the
simple-secure-update proposal, a work in progress in the DNS Extensions
working group of the IETF. (See
http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/dnsext-charter.html for information about
the DNS Extensions working group.) SIG and NXT records affected by updates
are automatically regenerated by the server using an online zone key. Update
authorization is based on transaction signatures and an explicit server
policy.
The zone files of dynamic zones must not be edited by hand. The zone file on
disk at any given time may not contain the latest changes performed by
dynamic update. The zone file is written to disk only periodically, and
changes that have occurred since the zone file was last written to disk are
stored only in the zone's journal ( .jnl) file. BIND 9 currently does not
update the zone file when it exits as BIND 8 does, so editing the zone file
manually is unsafe even when the server has been shut down.
4.2 Incremental Zone Transfers (IXFR)
The incremental zone transfer (IXFR) protocol is a way for slave servers to
transfer only changed data, instead of having to transfer the entire zone.
The IXFR protocol is documented in RFC 1995. See the list of proposed
standards in Appendix C.
When acting as a master, BIND 9 supports IXFR for those zones where the
necessary change history information is available. These include master
zones maintained by dynamic update and slave zones whose data was obtained
by IXFR, but not manually maintained master zones nor slave zones obtained
by performing a full zone transfer (AXFR).
When acting as a slave, BIND 9 will attempt to use IXFR unless it is
explicitly disabled. For more information about disabling IXFR, see the
description of the request-ixfr clause of the server statement.
4.3 Split DNS
Setting up different views, or visibility, of DNS space to internal and
external resolvers is usually referred to as a Split DNS setup. There are
several reasons an organization would want to set up its DNS this way.
One common reason for setting up a DNS system this way is to hide "internal"
DNS information from "external" clients on the Internet. There is some
debate as to whether or not this is actually useful. Internal DNS
information leaks out in many ways (via email headers, for example) and most
savvy "attackers" can find the information they need using other means.
Another common reason for setting up a Split DNS system is to allow internal
networks that are behind filters or in RFC 1918 space (reserved IP space, as
documented in RFC 1918) to resolve DNS on the Internet. Split DNS can also
be used to allow mail from outside back in to the internal network.
Here is an example of a split DNS setup:
Let's say a company named Example, Inc. (example.com) has several corporate
sites that have an internal network with reserved Internet Protocol (IP)
space and an external demilitarized zone (DMZ), or "outside" section of a
network, that is available to the public.
Example, Inc. wants its internal clients to be able to resolve external
hostnames and to exchange mail with people on the outside. The company also
wants its internal resolvers to have access to certain internal-only zones
that are not available at all outside of the internal network.
In order to accomplish this, the company will set up two sets of
nameservers. One set will be on the inside network (in the reserved IP
space) and the other set will be on bastion hosts, which are "proxy" hosts
that can talk to both sides of its network, in the DMZ.
The internal servers will be configured to forward all queries, except
queries for site1.internal, site2.internal, site1.example.com, and
site2.example.com, to the servers in the DMZ. These internal servers
will have complete sets of information for site1.example.com,
site2.example.com, site1.internal, and site2.internal.
To protect the site1.internal and site2.internal domains, the internal
nameservers must be configured to disallow all queries to these
domains from any external hosts, including the bastion hosts.
The external servers, which are on the bastion hosts, will be
configured to serve the "public" version of the site1 and
site2.example.com zones. This could include things such as the host
records for public servers (www.example.com and ftp.example.com), and
mail exchange (MX) records (a.mx.example.com and b.mx.example.com).
In addition, the public site1 and site2.example.com zones should have
special MX records that contain wildcard ('*') records pointing to the
bastion hosts. This is needed because external mail servers do not have any
other way of looking up how to deliver mail to those internal hosts. With
the wildcard records, the mail will be delivered to the bastion host, which
can then forward it on to internal hosts.
Here's an example of a wildcard MX record:
* IN MX 10 external1.example.com.
Now that they accept mail on behalf of anything in the internal network, the
bastion hosts will need to know how to deliver mail to internal hosts. In
order for this to work properly, the resolvers on the bastion hosts will
need to be configured to point to the internal nameservers for DNS
resolution.
Queries for internal hostnames will be answered by the internal servers, and
queries for external hostnames will be forwarded back out to the DNS servers
on the bastion hosts.
In order for all this to work properly, internal clients will need to be
configured to query only the internal nameservers for DNS queries. This
could also be enforced via selective filtering on the network.
If everything has been set properly, Example, Inc.'s internal clients will
now be able to:
* Look up any hostnames in the site1 and site2.example.com zones.
* Look up any hostnames in the site1.internal and site2.internal domains.
* Look up any hostnames on the Internet.
* Exchange mail with internal AND external people.
Hosts on the Internet will be able to:
* Look up any hostnames in the site1 and site2.example.com zones.
* Exchange mail with anyone in the site1 and site2.example.com zones.
Here is an example configuration for the setup we just described above. Note
that this is only configuration information; for information on how to
configure your zone files, see the Sample Configurations.
Internal DNS server config:
acl internals { 172.16.72.0/24; 192.168.1.0/24; };
acl externals { bastion-ips-go-here; };
options {
...
...
forward only;
forwarders { bastion-ips-go-here; }; // forward to external servers
allow-transfer { none; }; // sample allow-transfer (no one)
allow-query { internal; externals; }; // restrict query access
allow-recursion { internals; }; // restrict recursion
...
...
};
zone "site1.example.com" { // sample slave zone
type master;
file "m/site1.example.com";
forwarders { }; // do normal iterative
// resolution (do not forward)
allow-query { internals; externals; };
allow-transfer { internals; };
};
zone "site2.example.com" {
type slave;
file "s/site2.example.com";
masters { 172.16.72.3; };
forwarders { };
allow-query { internals; externals; };
allow-transfer { internals; };
};
zone "site1.internal" {
type master;
file "m/site1.internal";
forwarders { };
allow-query { internals; };
allow-transfer { internals; }
};
zone "site2.internal" {
type slave;
file "s/site2.internal";
masters { 172.16.72.3; };
forwarders { };
allow-query { internals };
allow-transfer { internals; }
};
External (bastion host) DNS server config:
acl internals { 172.16.72.0/24; 192.168.1.0/24; };
acl externals {
bastion-ips-go-here; };
options {
...
...
allow-transfer { none; }; // sample allow-transfer (no one)
allow-query { internals; externals; }; // restrict query access
allow-recursion { internals; externals; }; // restrict recursion
...
...
};
zone "site1.example.com" { // sample slave zone
type master;
file "m/site1.foo.com";
allow-query { any; };
allow-transfer { internals; externals; };
};
zone "site2.example.com" {
type slave;
file "s/site2.foo.com";
masters { another_bastion_host_maybe; };
allow-query { any; };
allow-transfer { internals; externals; }
};
In the resolv.conf (or equivalent) on the bastion host(s):
search ...
nameserver 172.16.72.2
nameserver 172.16.72.3
nameserver 172.16.72.4
4.4 TSIG
This is a short guide to setting up Transaction SIGnatures (TSIG) based
transaction security in BIND. It describes changes to the configuration file
as well as what changes are required for different features, including the
process of creating transaction keys and using transaction signatures with
BIND.
BIND primarily supports TSIG for server to server communication. This
includes zone transfer, notify, and recursive query messages. Resolvers
based on newer versions of BIND 8 have limited support for TSIG.
TSIG might be most useful for dynamic update. A primary server for a
dynamic zone should use access control to control updates, but
IP-based access control is insufficient. Key-based access control is
far superior. See RFC 2845 in the Proposed Standards section of the
Appendix. The nsupdate program supports TSIG via the " -k " and "-y"
command line options.
4.4.1 Generate Shared Keys for Each Pair of Hosts
A shared secret is generated to be shared between host1 and host2. An
arbitrary key name is chosen: "host1-host2.". The key name must be the same
on both hosts.
4.4.1.1 Automatic Generation
The following command will generate a 128 bit (16 byte) HMAC-MD5 key as
described above. Longer keys are better, but shorter keys are easier to
read. Note that the maximum key length is 512 bits; keys longer than that
will be digested with MD5 to produce a 128 bit key.
dnssec-keygen -a hmac-md5 -b 128 -n HOST host1-host2.
The key is in the file Khost1-host2.+157+00000.private. Nothing directly
uses this file, but the base-64 encoded string following " Key :" can be
extracted from the file and used as a shared secret:
Key: La/E5CjG9O+os1jq0a2jdA==
The string " La/E5CjG9O+os1jq0a2jdA== " can be used as the shared secret.
4.4.1.2 Manual Generation
The shared secret is simply a random sequence of bits, encoded in base-64.
Most ASCII strings are valid base-64 strings (assuming the length is a
multiple of 4 and only valid characters are used), so the shared secret can
be manually generated.
Also, a known string can be run through mmencode or a similar program to
generate base-64 encoded data.
4.4.2 Copying the Shared Secret to Both Machines
This is beyond the scope of DNS. A secure transport mechanism should be
used. This could be secure FTP, ssh, telephone, etc.
4.4.3 Informing the Servers of the Key's Existence
Imagine host1 and host 2 are both servers. The following is added to each
server's named.conf file:
key host1-host2. {
algorithm hmac-md5;
secret "La/E5CjG9O+os1jq0a2jdA==";
};
The algorithm, hmac-md5, is the only one supported by BIND. The secret is
the one generated above. Since this is a secret, it is recommended that
either named.conf be non-world readable, or the key directive be added to a
non-world readable file that is included by named.conf.
At this point, the key is recognized. This means that if the server receives
a message signed by this key, it can verify the signature. If the signature
succeeds, the response is signed by the same key.
4.4.4 Instructing the Server to Use the Key
Since keys are shared between two hosts only, the server must be told
when keys are to be used. The following is added to the named.conf
file for host1, if the IP address of host2 is 10.1.2.3:
server 10.1.2.3 {
keys { host1-host2. ;};
};
Multiple keys may be present, but only the first is used. This directive
does not contain any secrets, so it may be in a world-readable file.
If host1 sends a message that is a response to that address, the message
will be signed with the specified key. host1 will expect any responses to
signed messages to be signed with the same key.
A similar statement must be present in host2's configuration file (with
host1's address) for host2 to sign non-response messages to host1.
4.4.5 TSIG Key Based Access Control
BIND allows IP addresses and ranges to be specified in ACL definitions and
allow-{ query | transfer | update } directives. This has been extended to
allow TSIG keys also. The above key would be denoted key host1-host2.
An example of an allow-update directive would be:
allow-update { key host1-host2. ;};
This allows dynamic updates to succeed only if the request was signed by a
key named " host1-host2. ".
The more powerful update-policy statement is described Dynamic Update
Policies.
4.4.6 Errors
The processing of TSIG signed messages can result in several errors. If a
signed message is sent to a non-TSIG aware server, a FORMERR will be
returned, since the server will not understand the record. This is a result
of misconfiguration, since the server must be explicitly configured to send
a TSIG signed message to a specific server.
If a TSIG aware server receives a message signed by an unknown key, the
response will be unsigned with the TSIG extended error code set to BADKEY.
If a TSIG aware server receives a message with a signature that does not
validate, the response will be unsigned with the TSIG extended error code
set to BADSIG. If a TSIG aware server receives a message with a time outside
of the allowed range, the response will be signed with the TSIG extended
error code set to BADTIME, and the time values will be adjusted so that the
response can be successfully verified. In any of these cases, the message's
rcode is set to NOTAUTH.
4.5 TKEY
TKEY is a mechanism for automatically generating a shared secret between two
hosts. There are several "modes" of TKEY that specify how the key is
generated or assigned. BIND implements only one of these modes, the
Diffie-Hellman key exchange. Both hosts are required to have a
Diffie-Hellman KEY record (although this record is not required to be
present in a zone). The TKEY process must use signed messages, signed either
by TSIG or SIG(0). The result of TKEY is a shared secret that can be used to
sign messages with TSIG. TKEY can also be used to delete shared secrets that
it had previously generated.
The TKEY process is initiated by a client or server by sending a signed TKEY
query (including any appropriate KEYs) to a TKEY-aware server. The server
response, if it indicates success, will contain a TKEY record and any
appropriate keys. After this exchange, both participants have enough
information to determine the shared secret; the exact process depends on the
TKEY mode. When using the Diffie-Hellman TKEY mode, Diffie-Hellman keys are
exchanged, and the shared secret is derived by both participants.
4.6 SIG(0)
BIND 9 partially supports DNSSEC SIG(0) transaction signatures as specified
in RFC 2535. SIG(0) uses public/private keys to authenticate messages.
Access control is performed in the same manner as TSIG keys; privileges can
be granted or denied based on the key name.
When a SIG(0) signed message is received, it will only be verified if the
key is known and trusted by the server; the server will not attempt to
locate and/or validate the key.
BIND 9 does not ship with any tools that generate SIG(0) signed messages.
4.7 DNSSEC
Cryptographic authentication of DNS information is possible through the DNS
Security ( DNSSEC) extensions, defined in RFC 2535. This section describes
the creation and use of DNSSEC signed zones.
In order to set up a DNSSEC secure zone, there are a series of steps which
must be followed. BIND 9 ships with several tools that are used in this
process, which are explained in more detail below. In all cases, the " -h "
option prints a full list of parameters.
There must also be communication with the administrators of the parent
and/or child zone to transmit keys and signatures. A zone's security status
must be indicated by the parent zone for a DNSSEC capable resolver to trust
its data.
For other servers to trust data in this zone, they must either be statically
configured with this zone's zone key or the zone key of another zone above
this one in the DNS tree.
4.7.1 Generating Keys
The dnssec-keygen program is used to generate keys.
A secure zone must contain one or more zone keys. The zone keys will sign
all other records in the zone, as well as the zone keys of any secure
delegated zones. Zone keys must have the same name as the zone, a name type
of ZONE, and must be usable for authentication. It is recommended that zone
keys be mandatory to implement a cryptographic algorithm; currently the only
key mandatory to implement an algorithm is DSA.
The following command will generate a 768 bit DSA key for the child.example
zone:
dnssec-keygen -a DSA -b 768 -n ZONE child.example.
Two output files will be produced: Kchild.example.+003+12345.key and
Kchild.example.+003+12345.private (where 12345 is an example of a key
tag). The key file names contain the key name ( child.example.),
algorithm (3 is DSA, 1 is RSA, etc.), and the key tag (12345 in this
case). The private key (in the .private file) is used to generate
signatures, and the public key (in the .key file) is used for signature
verification.
To generate another key with the same properties (but with a different key
tag), repeat the above command.
The public keys should be inserted into the zone file with $INCLUDE
statements, including the .key files.
4.7.2 Creating a Keyset
The dnssec-makekeyset program is used to create a key set from one or more
keys.
Once the zone keys have been generated, a key set must be built for
transmission to the administrator of the parent zone, so that the parent
zone can sign the keys with its own zone key and correctly indicate the
security status of this zone. When building a key set, the list of keys to
be included and the TTL of the set must be specified, and the desired
signature validity period of the parent's signature may also be specified.
The list of keys to be inserted into the key set may also included non-zone
keys present at the top of the zone. dnssec-makekeyset may also be used at other
names in the zone.
The following command generates a key set containing the above key and
another key similarly generated, with a TTL of 3600 and a signature validity
period of 10 days starting from now.
dnssec-makekeyset -t 3600 -e +864000 Kchild.example.+003+12345
Kchild.example.+003+23456
One output file is produced: child.example.keyset. This file should be
transmitted to the parent to be signed. It includes the keys, as well as
signatures over the key set generated by the zone keys themselves, which are
used to prove ownership of the private keys and encode the desired validity
period.
4.7.3 Signing the Child's Keyset
The dnssec-signkey program is used to sign one child's keyset.
If the child.example zone has any delegations which are secure, for example,
grand.child.example, the child.example administrator should receive keyset
files for each secure subzone. These keys must be signed by this zone's zone
keys.
The following command signs the child's key set with the zone keys:
dnssec-signkey grand.child.example.keyset Kchild.example.+003+12345
Kchild.example.+003+23456
One output file is produced: grand.child.example.signedkey. This file
should be both transmitted back to the child and retained. It includes all
keys (the child's keys) from the keyset file and signatures generated by
this zone's zone keys.
4.7.4 Signing the Zone
The dnssec-signzone program is used to sign a zone.
Any signedkey files corresponding to secure subzones should be present, as
well as a signedkey file for this zone generated by the parent (if there is
one). The zone signer will generate NXT and SIG records for the zone, as
well as incorporate the zone key signature from the parent and indicate the
security status at all delegation points.
The following command signs the zone, assuming it is in a file called
zone.child.example. By default, all zone keys which have an available
private key are used to generate signatures.
dnssec-signzone -o child.example zone.child.example
One output file is produced: zone.child.example.signed. This file should be
referenced by named.conf as the input file for the zone.
4.7.5 Configuring Servers
Unlike in BIND 8, data is not verified on load in BIND 9, so zone keys for
authoritative zones do not need to be specified in the configuration file.
The public key for any security root must be present in the configuration
file's
trusted-keys statement, as described later in this document.
4.8 IPv6 Support in BIND 9
BIND 9 fully supports all currently defined forms of IPv6 name to address
and address to name lookups. It will also use IPv6 addresses to make queries
when running on an IPv6 capable system.
For forward lookups, BIND 9 supports both A6 and AAAA records. The of AAAA
records is deprecated, but it is still useful for hosts to have both AAAA
and A6 records to maintain backward compatibility with installations where
AAAA records are still used. In fact, the stub resolvers currently shipped
with most operating system support only AAAA lookups, because following A6
chains is much harder than doing A or AAAA lookups.
For IPv6 reverse lookups, BIND 9 supports the new "bitstring" format used in
the ip6.arpa domain, as well as the older, deprecated "nibble" format used
in the ip6.int domain.
BIND 9 includes a new lightweight resolver library and resolver daemon which
new applications may choose to use to avoid the complexities of A6 chain
following and bitstring labels. See The BIND 9 Lightweight Resolver for more
information.
4.8.1 Address Lookups Using AAAA Records
The AAAA record is a parallel to the IPv4 A record. It specifies the entire
address in a single record. For example,
$ORIGIN example.com.
host 1h IN AAAA 3ffe:8050:201:1860:42::1
While their use is deprecated, they are useful to support older IPv6
applications. They should not be added where they are not absolutely
necessary.
4.8.2 Address Lookups Using A6 Records
The A6 record is more flexible than the AAAA record, and is therefore more
complicated. The A6 record can be used to form a chain of A6 records, each
specifying part of the IPv6 address. It can also be used to specify the
entire record as well. For example, this record supplies the same data as
the AAAA record in the previous example:
$ORIGIN example.com.
host 1h IN A6 0 3ffe:8050:201:1860:42::1
4.8.2.1 A6 Chains
A6 records are designed to allow network renumbering. This works when an A6
record only specifies the part of the address space the domain owner
controls. For example, a host may be at a company named "company." It has
two ISPs which provide IPv6 address space for it. These two ISPs fully
specify the IPv6 prefix they supply.
In the company's address space:
$ORIGIN example.com.
host 1h IN A6 64 0:0:0:0:42::1 company.example1.net.
host 1h IN A6 64 0:0:0:0:42::1 company.example2.net.
ISP1 will use:
$ORIGIN example1.net.
company 1h IN A6 0 3ffe:8050:201:1860::
ISP2 will use:
$ORIGIN example2.net.
company 1h IN A6 0 1234:5678:90ab:fffa::
When host.example.com is looked up, the resolver (in the resolver daemon or
caching name server) will find two partial A6 records, and will use the
additional name to find the remainder of the data.
4.8.2.2 A6 Records for DNS Servers
When an A6 record specifies the address of a name server, it should use the
full address rather than specifying a partial address. For example:
$ORIGIN example.com.
@ 4h IN NS ns0
4h IN NS ns1
ns0 4h IN A6 0 3ffe:8050:201:1860:42::1
ns1 4h IN A 192.168.42.1
It is recommended that IPv4-in-IPv6 mapped addresses not be used. If a host
has an IPv4 address, use an A record, not an A6, with ::ffff:192.168.42.1 as
the address.
4.8.3 Address to Name Lookups Using Nibble Format
While the use of nibble format to look up names is deprecated, it is
supported for backwards compatiblity with existing IPv6 applications.
When looking up an address in nibble format, the address components are
simply reversed, just as in IPv4, and ip6.int. is appended to the resulting
name. For example, the following would provide reverse name lookup for a
host with address 3ffe:8050:201:1860:42::1.
$ORIGIN 0.6.8.1.1.0.2.0.0.5.0.8.e.f.f.3.ip6.int.
1.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.2.4.0.0 4h IN PTR host.example.com.
4.8.4 Address to Name Lookups Using Bitstring Format
Bitstring labels can start and end on any bit boundary, rather than on a
multiple of 4 bits as in the nibble format. They also use ip6.arpa rather
than ip6.int.
To replicate the previous example using bitstrings:
$ORIGIN \[x3ffe805002011860/64].ip6.arpa.
\[x0042000000000001/64] 4h IN PTR host.example.com.
4.8.5 Using DNAME for Delegation of IPv6 Reverse Addresses
In IPV6, the same host may have many addresses from many network
providers. Since the trailing portion of the address usually
remains constant, DNAME can help reduce the number of zone files used
for reverse mapping that need to be maintained.
For example, consider a host which has two providers (example.net and
example2.net) and therefore two IPv6 addresses. Since the host chooses
its own 64 bit host address portion, the provider address is the only
part that changes:
$ORIGIN example.com.
host A6 64 ::1234:5678:1212:5675 cust1.example.net.
A6 64 ::1234:5678:1212:5675 subnet5.example2.net.
$ORIGIN example.net.
cust1 A6 48 0:0:0:dddd:: ipv6net.example.net.
ipv6net A6 0 aa:bb:cccc::
$ORIGIN example2.net.
subnet5 A6 48 0:0:0:1:: ipv6net2.example2.net.
ipv6net2 A6 0 6666:5555:4::
This sets up forward lookups. To handle the reverse lookups, the
provider example.net would have:
$ORIGIN \[x00aa00bbcccc/48].ip6.arpa.
\[xdddd/16] DNAME ipv6-rev.example.com.
and example2.net would have:
$ORIGIN \[x666655550004/48].ip6.arpa.
\[x0001/16] DNAME ipv6-rev.example.com.
example.com needs only one zone file to handle both of these reverse
mappings:
$ORIGIN ipv6-rev.example.com.
\[x1234567812125675/64] PTR host.example.com.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Section 5. The BIND 9 Lightweight Resolver
5.1 The Lightweight Resolver Library
Traditionally applications have been linked with a stub resolver library
that sends recursive DNS queries to a local caching name server.
IPv6 introduces new complexity into the resolution process, such as
following A6 chains and DNAME records, and simultaneous lookup of IPv4 and
IPv6 addresses. These are hard or impossible to implement in a traditional
stub resolver.
Instead, BIND 9 provides resolution services to local clients using a
combination of a lightweight resolver library and a resolver daemon process
running on the local host. These communicate using a simple UDP-based
protocol, the "lightweight resolver protocol" that is distinct from and
simpler than the full DNS protocol.
5.2 Running a Resolver Daemon
To use the lightweight resolver interface, the system must run the resolver
daemon lwresd.
Applications using the lightweight resolver library will make UDP requests
to the IPv4 loopback address (127.0.0.1) on port 921. The daemon will try to
find the answer to the questions "what are the addresses for host
foo.example.com ?" and "what are the names for IPv4 address 204.152.184.79?"
The daemon currently only looks in the DNS, but in the future it may use
other sources such as /etc/hosts, NIS, etc.
The lwresd daemon is essentially a stripped-down, caching-only name server
that answers requests using the lightweight resolver protocol rather than
the DNS protocol. Because it needs to run on each host, it is designed to
require no or minimal configuration. It uses the name servers listed on
nameserver lines in /etc/resolv.conf as forwarders, but is also capable of
doing the resolution autonomously if none are specified.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Section 6. BIND 9 Configuration Reference
BIND 9 configuration is broadly similar to BIND 8.x; however, there are a
few new areas of configuration, such as views. BIND 8.x configuration files
should work with few alterations in BIND 9, although more complex
configurations should be reviewed to check if they can be more efficiently
implemented using the new features found in BIND 9.
BIND 4 configuration files can be converted to the new format using the
shell script
contrib/named-bootconf/named-bootconf.sh.
6.1 Configuration File Elements
Following is a list of elements used throughout the BIND configuration file
documentation:
acl_name The name of an address_match_list as defined by the acl
statement.
address_match_list A list of one or more ip_addr, ip_prefix, key_id, or
acl_name elements, as described in Address Match Lists.
domain_name A quoted string which will be used as a DNS name, for
example " my.test.domain ".
dotted_decimal One or more integers valued 0 through 255 separated
only by dots ('.'), such as 123, 45.67 or 89.123.45.67.
ip4_addr An IPv4 address with exactly four elements in
dotted_decimal notation.
ip6_addr
An IPv6 address, such as fe80::200:f8ff:fe01:9742.
ip_addr An ip4_addr or ip6_addr.
ip_port An IP port number. number is limited to 0 through
65535, with values below 1024 typically restricted to
root-owned processes. In some cases an asterisk ('*')
character can be used as a placeholder to select a
random high-numbered port.
An IP network specified as an ip_addr, followed by a
ip_prefix slash ('/') and then the number of bits in the netmask.
For example, 127/8 is the network 127.0.0.0 with
netmask 255.0.0.0 and 1.2.3.0/28 is network 1.2.3.0
with netmask 255.255.255.240.
key_id A domain_name representing the name of a shared key, to
be used for transaction security.
key_list A list of one or more key_ids, separated by semicolons
and ending with a semicolon.
number A non-negative integer with an entire range limited by
the range of a C language signed integer (2,147,483,647
on a machine with 32 bit integers). Its acceptable
value might further be limited by the context in which
it is used.
path_name A quoted string which will be used as a pathname, such
as " zones/master/my.test.domain ".
size_spec A number, the word unlimited, or the word default.
The maximum value of size_spec is that of unsigned long
integers on the machine. An unlimited size_spec
requests unlimited use, or the maximum available
amount. A default size_spec uses the limit that was in
force when the server was started.
A number can optionally be followed by a scaling
factor: K or k for kilobytes, M or m for megabytes, and
G or g for gigabytes, which scale by 1024, 1024*1024,
and 1024*1024*1024 respectively.
Integer storage overflow is currently silently ignored
during conversion of scaled values, resulting in values
less than intended, possibly even negative. Using
unlimited is the best way to safely set a really large
number.
yes_or_no Either yes or no. The words true and false are also
accepted, as are the numbers 1 and 0.
6.1.1 Address Match Lists
6.1.1.1 Syntax
address_match_list = address_match_list_element ;
[ address_match_list_element; ... ]
address_match_list_element = [ ! ] (ip_address [/length] |
key key_id | acl_name | { address_match_list } )
6.1.1.2 Definition and Usage
Address match lists are primarily used to determine access control for
various server operations. They are also used to define priorities for
querying other nameservers and to set the addresses on which named will
listen for queries. The elements which constitute an address match list can
be any of the following:
* an IP address (IPv4 or IPv6)
* an IP prefix (in the `/'-notation)
* a key ID, as defined by the key statement
* the name of an address match list previously defined with the acl
statement
* a nested address match list enclosed in braces
Elements can be negated with a leading exclamation mark ('!') and the match
list names "any," "none," "localhost" and "localnets" are predefined. More
information on those names can be found in the description of the acl
statement.
The addition of the key clause made the name of this syntactic element
something of a misnomer, since security keys can be used to validate access
without regard to a host or network address. Nonetheless, the term "address
match list" is still used throughout the documentation.
When a given IP address or prefix is compared to an address match list, the
list is traversed in order until an element matches. The interpretation of a
match depends on whether the list is being used for access control, defining
listen-on ports, or as a topology, and whether the element was negated.
When used as an access control list, a non-negated match allows access and a
negated match denies access. If there is no match, access is denied. The
clauses allow-query, allow-transfer, allow-update and blackhole all use
address match lists this. Similarly, the listen-on option will cause the
server to not accept queries on any of the machine's addresses which do not
match the list.
When used with the topology clause, a non-negated match returns a distance
based on its position on the list (the closer the match is to the start of
the list, the shorter the distance is between it and the server). A negated
match will be assigned the maximum distance from the server. If there is no
match, the address will get a distance which is further than any non-negated
list element, and closer than any negated element.
Because of the first-match aspect of the algorithm, an element that defines
a subset of another element in the list should come before the broader
element, regardless of whether either is negated. For example, in
1.2.3/24; ! 1.2.3.13; the 1.2.3.13 element is completely useless because the
algorithm will match any lookup for 1.2.3.13 to the 1.2.3/24 element. Using
! 1.2.3.13; 1.2.3/24 fixes that problem by having 1.2.3.13 blocked by the
negation but all other 1.2.3.* hosts fall through.
6.1.2 Comment Syntax
The BIND 9 comment syntax allows for comments to appear anywhere that white
space may appear in a BIND configuration file. To appeal to programmers of
all kinds, they can be written in C, C++, or shell/perl constructs.
6.1.2.1 Syntax
/* This is a BIND comment as in C */
// This is a BIND comment as in C++
# This is a BIND comment as in common UNIX shells and perl
6.1.2.2 Definition and Usage
Comments may appear anywhere that whitespace may appear in a BIND
configuration file.
C-style comments start with the two characters /* (slash, star) and end with
*/ (star, slash). Because they are completely delimited with these
characters, they can be used to comment only a portion of a line or to span
multiple lines.
C-style comments cannot be nested. For example, the following is not valid
because the entire comment ends with the first */:
/* This is the start of a comment.
This is still part of the comment.
/* This is an incorrect attempt at nesting a comment. */
This is no longer in any comment. */
C++-style comments start with the two characters // (slash, slash) and
continue to the end of the physical line. They cannot be continued across
multiple physical lines; to have one logical comment span multiple lines,
each line must use the // pair.
For example:
// This is the start of a comment. The next line
// is a new comment, even though it is logically
// part of the previous comment.
Shell-style (or perl-style, if you prefer) comments start with the character
# (number sign) and continue to the end of the physical line, as in C++
comments.
For example:
# This is the start of a comment. The next line
# is a new comment, even though it is logically
# part of the previous comment.
WARNING: you cannot use the semicolon (';') character to start a comment
such as you would in a zone file. The semicolon indicates the end of a
configuration statement.
6.2 Configuration File Grammar
A BIND 9 configuration consists of statements and comments. Statements end
with a semicolon. Statements and comments are the only elements that can
appear without enclosing braces. Many statements contain a block of
substatements, which are also terminated with a semicolon.
The following statements are supported:
acl defines a named IP address matching list, for access control
and other uses.
controls declares control channels to be used by the rndc utility.
include includes a file.
key specifies key information for use in authentication and
authorization using TSIG.
logging specifies what the server logs, and where the log messages
are sent.
options controls global server configuration options and sets
defaults for other statements.
server sets certain configuration options on a per-server basis.
trusted-keys defines trusted DNSSEC keys.
view defines a view.
zone defines a zone.
The logging and options statements may only occur once per configuration.
6.2.1 acl Statement Grammar
acl acl-name {
address_match_list
};
6.2.2 acl Statement Definition and Usage
The acl statement assigns a symbolic name to an address match list. It gets
its name from a primary use of address match lists: Access Control Lists
(ACLs).
Note that an address match list's name must be defined with acl before it
can be used elsewhere; no forward references are allowed.
The following ACLs are built-in:
any Matches all hosts.
none Matches no hosts.
localhost Matches the IP addresses of all interfaces on the system.
localnets Matches any host on a network for which the system has an
interface.
6.2.3 controls Statement Grammar
controls {
[ inet (ip_addr|*) port ip_port allow { address_match_list } ;
keys { key_list };
[ inet...; ]
};
6.2.4 controls Statement Definition and Usage
The controls statement declares control channels to be used by system
administrators to affect the operation of the local nameserver. These
control channels are used by the rndc utility to send commands to and
retrieve non-DNS results from a nameserver.
An inet control channel is a TCP/IP socket accessible to the Internet,
created at the specified ip_port on the specified ip_addr. If no port
is specified, port 953 is used by default. "*" cannot be used for
ip_port.
The ability to issue commands over the control channel is restricted
by the allow and keys clauses. Connections to the control channel are
permitted based on the address permissions in address_match_list.
key_id members of the address_match_list are ignored, and instead are
interpreted independently based the key_list. Each key_id in the
key_list is allowed to be used to authenticate commands and responses
given over the control channel by digitally signing each message
between the server and a command client (see rndc in section 3.4.1.2).
All commands to the control channel must be signed by one of its
specified keys to be honored.
For the initial release of BIND 9.0.0, only one command is possible
over the command channel, the command to reload the server. We will
expand command set in future releases.
The UNIX control channel type of BIND 8 is not supported in BIND
9.0.0, and is not expected to be added in future releases. If it is
present in the controls statement from a BIND 8 configuration file, a
non-fatal warning will be logged.
6.2.5 include Statement Grammar
include filename ;
6.2.6 include Statement Definition and Usage
The include statement inserts the specified file at the point that the
include statement is encountered. The include statement facilitates the
administration of configuration files by permitting the reading or writing
of some things but not others. For example, the statement could include
private keys that are readable only by a nameserver.
6.2.7 key Statement Grammar
key key_id {
algorithm string;
secret string;
};
6.2.8 key Statement Definition and Usage
The key statement defines a shared secret key for use with TSIG. See TSIG.
The key_id, also known as the key name, is a domain name uniquely
identifying the key. It can be used in a "server" statement to cause
requests sent to that server to be signed with this key, or in address match
lists to verify that incoming requests have been signed with a key matching
this name, algorithm, and secret.
The algorithm_id is a string that specifies a security/authentication
algorithm. The only algorithm currently supported with TSIG authentication
is hmac-md5. The secret_string is the secret to be used by the algorithm,
and is treated as a base-64 encoded string.
6.2.9 logging Statement Grammar
logging {
[ channel channel_name {
( file path name
[ versions ( number | unlimited ) ]
[ size size spec ]
| syslog ( syslog_facility
| null );
[ severity (critical | error | warning | notice |
info | debug [ level ] | dynamic ; ]
[ print-category yes or no;
[ print-severity yes or no; ]
[ print-time yes or no; ]
}; ]
[ category category_name {
channel_name ; [ channel_name ; ... ]
}; ]
...
};
6.2.10 logging Statement Definition and Usage
The logging statement configures a wide variety of logging options for the
nameserver. Its channel phrase associates output methods, format options and
severity levels with a name that can then be used with the category phrase
to select how various classes of messages are logged.
Only one logging statement is used to define as many channels and categories
as are wanted. If there is no logging statement, the logging configuration
will be:
logging {
category "default" { "default_syslog"; "default_debug"; };
};
In BIND 9, the logging configuration is only established when the entire
configuration file has been parsed. In BIND 8, it was established as soon as
the logging statement was parsed. When the server is starting up, all
logging messages regarding syntax errors in the configuration file go to the
default channels, or to standard error if the " -g " option was specified.
6.2.10.1 The channel Phrase
All log output goes to one or more channels ; you can make as many of them
as you want.
Every channel definition must include a clause that says whether messages
selected for the channel go to a file, to a particular syslog facility, or
are discarded. It can optionally also limit the message severity level that
will be accepted by the channel (the default is info), and whether to
include a named -generated time stamp, the category name and/or severity
level (the default is not to include any).
The word null as the destination option for the channel will cause all
messages sent to it to be discarded; in that case, other options for the
channel are meaningless.
The file clause can include limitations both on how large the file is
allowed to become, and how many versions of the file will be saved each time
the file is opened.
The size option for files is simply a hard ceiling on log growth. If the
file ever exceeds the size, then named will not write anything more to it
until the file is reopened; exceeding the size does not automatically
trigger a reopen. The default behavior is not to limit the size of the file.
If you use the version log file option, then named will retain that many
backup versions of the file by renaming them when opening. For example, if
you choose to keep 3 old versions of the file lamers.log then just before it
is opened lamers.log.1 is renamed to lamers.log.2, lamers.log.0 is renamed
to lamers.log.1, and lamers.log is renamed to lamers.log.0. No rolled
versions are kept by default; any existing log file is simply appended. The
unlimited keyword is synonymous with 99 in current BIND releases.
Example usage of the size and versions options:
channel "an_example_channel" {
file "example.log" versions 3 size 20m;
print-time yes;
print-category yes;
};
The argument for the syslog clause is a syslog facility as described in the
syslog man page. How syslog will handle messages sent to this facility is
described in the syslog.conf man page. If you have a system which uses a
very old version of syslog that only uses two arguments to the openlog()
function, then this clause is silently ignored.
The severity clause works like syslog's "priorities," except that they
can also be used if you are writing straight to a file rather than
using syslog. Messages which are not at least of the severity level
given will not be selected for the channel; messages of higher
severity levels will be accepted.
If you are using syslog, then the syslog.conf priorities will also
determine what eventually passes through. For example, defining a channel
facility and severity as daemon and debug but only logging daemon.warning
via syslog.conf will cause messages of severity info and notice to be
dropped. If the situation were reversed, with named writing messages of only
warning or higher, then syslogd would print all messages it received from
the channel.
The server can supply extensive debugging information when it is in
debugging mode. If the server's global debug level is greater than
zero, then debugging mode will be active. The global debug level is
set either by starting the named server with the " -d " flag followed
by a positive integer, or by running rndc trace (the latter method is
not yet implemented). The global debug level can be set to zero, and
debugging mode turned off, by running ndc notrace. All debugging
messages in the server have a debug level, and higher debug levels
give more detailed output. Channels that specify a specific debug
severity, for example:
channel "specific_debug_level" {
file "foo";
severity debug 3;
};
will get debugging output of level 3 or less any time the server is in
debugging mode, regardless of the global debugging level. Channels with
dynamic severity use the server's global level to determine what messages to
print.
If print-time has been turned on, then the date and time will be logged.
print-time may be specified for a syslog channel, but is usually pointless
since syslog also prints the date and time. If print-category is requested,
then the category of the message will be logged as well. Finally, if
print-severity is on, then the severity level of the message will be logged.
The print- options may be used in any combination, and will always be
printed in the following order: time, category, severity. Here is an example
where all three print-options are on:
28-Feb-2000 15:05:32.863 general: notice: running
There are four predefined channels that are used for named's default
logging as follows. How they are used is described in the category Phrase.
channel "default_syslog" {
syslog daemon; // end to syslog's daemon
// facility
severity info; // only send priority info
// and higher
};
channel "default_debug" {
file "named.run"; // write to named.run in
// the working directory
// Note: stderr is used instead
// of "named.run"
// if the server is started
// with the '-f' option.
severity dynamic // log at the server's
// current debug level
};
channel "default_stderr" { // writes to stderr
file "<stderr>"; // this is illustrative only;
// there's currently no way of
// specifying an internal file
// descriptor in the
// configuration language.
severity info; // only send priority info
// and higher
};
channel "null" {
null; // toss anything sent to
// this channel
};
The default_debug channel normally writes to a file named.run in the
server's working directory. For security reasons, when the "-u"
command line option is used, the named.run file is created only after
named has changed to the new UID, and any debug output generated while
named is starting up and still running as root is discarded. If you
need to capture this output, you must run the server with the "-g"
option and redirect standard error to a file.
Once a channel is defined, it cannot be redefined. Thus you cannot
alter the built-in channels directly, but you can modify the default
logging by pointing categories at channels you have defined.
6.2.10.2 The category Phrase
There are many categories, so you can send the logs you want to see wherever
you want, without seeing logs you don't want. If you don't specify a list of
channels for a category, then log messages in that category will be sent to
the default category instead. If you don't specify a default category, the
following "default default" is used:
category "default" { "default_syslog"; "default_debug"; };
As an example, let's say you want to log security events to a file, but you
also want keep the default logging behavior. You'd specify the following:
channel "my_security_channel" {
file "my_security_file";
severity info;
};
category "security" {
"my_security_channel";
"default_syslog";
"default_debug";
};
To discard all messages in a category, specify the null channel:
category "xfer-out" { "null"; };
category "notify" { "null"; };
Following are the available categories and brief descriptions of the types
of log information they contain. More categories may be added in future
BIND releases.
default The default category defines the logging options for those
categories where no specific configuration has been defined.
general The catch-all. Many things still aren't classified into
categories, and they all end up here.
database Messages relating to the databases used internally by the name
server to store zone and cache data.
security Approval and denial of requests.
config Configuration file parsing and processing.
resolver DNS resolution, such as the recursive lookups performed on behalf
of clients by a caching name server.
xfer-in Zone transfers the server is receiving.
xfer-out Zone transfers the server is sending.
notify The NOTIFY protocol.
client Processing of client requests.
network Network operations.
update Dynamic updates.
6.2.11 options Statement Grammar
This is the grammar of the option statement in the named.conf file:
options {
[ version version_string; ]
[ directory path_name; ]
[ named-xfer path_name; ]
[ tkey-domain domainname; ]
[ tkey-dhkey key_name key_tag; ]
[ dump-file path_name; ]
[ memstatistics-file path_name; ]
[ pid-file path_name; ]
[ statistics-file path_name; ]
[ auth-nxdomain yes_or_no; ]
[ deallocate-on-exit yes_or_no; ]
[ dialup yes_or_no; ]
[ fake-iquery yes_or_no; ]
[ fetch-glue yes_or_no; ]
[ has-old-clients yes_or_no; ]
[ host-statistics yes_or_no; ]
[ multiple-cnames yes_or_no; ]
[ notify yes_or_no; ]
[ recursion yes_or_no; ]
[ rfc2308-type1 yes_or_no; ]
[ use-id-pool yes_or_no; ]
[ maintain-ixfr-base yes_or_no; ]
[ forward ( only | first ); ]
[ forwarders { [ in_addr ; [ in_addr ; ... ] ] }; ]
[ check-names ( master | slave | response )( warn | fail | ignore ); ]
[ allow-query { address_match_list }; ]
[ allow-transfer { address_match_list }; ]
[ allow-recursion { address_match_list }; ]
[ blackhole { address_match_list }; ]
[ listen-on [ port ip_port ] { address_match_list }; ]
[ query-source [ address ( ip_addr | * ) ] [ port ( ip_port | * ) ]; ]
[ max-transfer-time-in number; ]
[ max-transfer-time-out number; ]
[ max-transfer-idle-in number; ]
[ max-transfer-idle-out number; ]
[ tcp-clients number; ]
[ recursive-clients number; ]
[ serial-queries number; ]
[ transfer-format ( one-answer | many-answers ); ]
[ transfers-in number; ]
[ transfers-out number; ]
[ transfers-per-ns number; ]
[ transfer-source ip4_addr; ]
[ transfer-source-v6 ip6_addr; ]
[ also-notify { ip_addr; [ ip_addr; ... ] }; ]
[ max-ixfr-log-size number; ]
[ coresize size_spec ; ]
[ datasize size_spec ; ]
[ files size_spec ; ]
[ stacksize size_spec ; ]
[ cleaning-interval number; ]
[ heartbeat-interval number; ]
[ interface-interval number; ]
[ statistics-interval number; ]
[ topology { address_match_list }; ]
[ sortlist { address_match_list }; ]
[ rrset-order { order_spec ; [ order_spec ; ... ] ] };
[ lame-ttl number; ] [ max-ncache-ttl number; ]
[ max-cache-ttl number; ]
[ sig-validity-interval number ; ]
[ min-roots number; ]
[ use-ixfr yes_or_no ; ]
[ treat-cr-as-space yes_or_no ; ]
};
6.2.12 options Statement Definition and Usage
The options statement sets up global options to be used by BIND. This
statement may appear only once in a configuration file. If more than one
occurrence is found, the first occurrence determines the actual options
used, and a warning will be generated. If there is no options statement, an
options block with each option set to its default will be used.
version The version the server should report via a query of
name version.bind in class chaos. The default is the
real version number of this server.
directory The working directory of the server. Any non-absolute
pathnames in the configuration file will be taken as
relative to this directory. The default location for
most server output files (e.g. named.run) is this
directory. If a directory is not specified, the working
directory defaults to '.', the directory from which
the server was started. The directory specified should
be an absolute path.
named-xfer This option is obsolete. It was used in BIND 8 to
specify the pathname to the named-xfer program. In
BIND 9, no separate named-xfer program is needed; its
functionality is built into the name server.
tkey-domain The domain appended to the names of all shared keys
generated with TKEY. When a client requests a TKEY
exchange, it may or may not specify the desired name
for the key. If present, the name of the shared key
will be " client specified part " + " tkey-domain ".
Otherwise, the name of the shared key will be " random
hex digits " + " tkey-domain ". In most cases, the
domainname should be the server's domain name.
tkey-dhkey The Diffie-Hellman key used by the server to generate
shared keys with clients using the Diffie-Hellman mode
of TKEY. The server must be able to load the public
and private keys from files in the working directory.
In most cases, the keyname should be the server's host
name.
dump-file The pathname of the file the server dumps the database
to when it receives SIGINT signal (ndc dumpdb). If
not specified, the default is named_dump.db. Not yet
implemented in BIND 9.
memstatistics-file The pathname of the file the server writes memory usage
statistics to on exit. If not specified, the default is
named.memstats. Not yet implemented in BIND 9.
pid-file The pathname of the file the server writes its process
ID in. If not specified, the default is operating
system dependent, but is usually
/var/run/named.pid or /etc/named.pid. The pid-file is
used by programs that want to send signals to the
running nameserver.
statistics-file The pathname of the file the server appends statistics
to. If not specified, the default is named.stats. Not
yet implemented in BIND 9.
6.2.12.1 Boolean Options
auth-nxdomain If yes, then the AA bit is always set on NXDOMAIN
responses, even if the server is not actually
authoritative. The default is no ; this is a change
from BIND 8. If you are using very old DNS software,
you may need to set it to yes.
deallocate-on-exit This option was used in BIND 8 to enable checking for
memory leaks on exit. BIND 9 ignores the option and
always performs the checks.
dialup If yes, then the server treats all zones as if they
are doing zone transfers across a dial on demand dialup
link, which can be brought up by traffic originating
from this server. This has different effects according
to zone type and concentrates the zone maintenance so
that it all happens in a short interval, once every
heartbeat-interval and hopefully during the one call.
It also suppresses some of the normal zone maintenance
traffic. The default is no.
The dialup option may also be specified in the zone
statement, in which case it overrides the options
dialup statement.
If the zone is a master then the server will send out a
NOTIFY request to all the slaves. This will trigger the
zone serial number check in the slave (providing it
supports NOTIFY) allowing the slave to verify the zone
while the connection is active.
If the zone is a slave or stub then the server will
suppress the regular "zone up to date" queries and only
perform them when the
heartbeat-interval expires. Not yet implemented in
BIND 9.
fake-iquery In BIND 8, this option was used to enable simulating
the obsolete DNS query type IQUERY. BIND 9 never does
IQUERY simulation.
fetch-glue (Information present outside of the authoritative nodes
in the zone is called glue information). If yes (the
default), the server will fetch glue resource records
it doesn't have when constructing the additional data
section of a response. fetch-glue no can be used in
conjunction with recursion no to prevent the server's
cache from growing or becoming corrupted (at the cost
of requiring more work from the client). Not yet
implemented in BIND 9.
has-old-clients This option was incorrectly implemented in BIND 8, and
is ignored by BIND 9. To achieve the intended effect of
has-old-clients yes, specify the two separate options
auth-nxdomain yes and rfc2308-type1 no instead.
host-statistics If yes, then statistics are kept for every host that
the nameserver interacts with. The default is no.
Note: turning on host-statistics can consume huge
amounts of memory. Not yet implemented in BIND 9.
maintain-ixfr-base This option is obsolete. It was used in BIND 8 to
determine whether a transaction log was kept for
Incremental Zone Transfer. BIND 9 maintains a
transaction log whenever possible. If you need to
disable outgoing incremental zone transfers, use
provide-ixfr no.
multiple-cnames This option was used in BIND 8 to allow a domain name
to allow multiple CNAME records in violation of the DNS
standards. BIND 9 currently does not check for multiple
CNAMEs in zone data loaded from master files, but such
checks may be introduced in a later release. BIND 9
always strictly enforces the CNAME rules in dynamic
updates.
notify If yes (the default), DNS NOTIFY messages are sent when
a zone the server is authoritative for changes. See
Notify, for more information. The notify option may
also be specified in the zone statement, in which case
it overrides the options notify statement. It would
only be necessary to turn off this option if it caused
slaves to crash.
recursion If yes, and a DNS query requests recursion, then the
server will attempt to do all the work required to
answer the query. If recursion is not on, the server
will return a referral to the client if it doesn't know
the answer. The default is yes. See also fetch-glue
above.
rfc2308-type1 Setting this to yes will cause the server to send NS
records along with the SOA record for negative answers.
The default is no. Not yet implemented in BIND 9.
use-id-pool This option is obsolete. BIND 9 always allocates query
IDs from a pool.
treat-cr-as-space This option was used in BIND 8 to make the server treat
"\r" characters the same way as <space> " " or "\t",
to facilitate loading of zone files on a UNIX system
that were generated on an NT or DOS machine. In BIND 9,
both UNIX "\n" and NT/DOS "\r\n" newlines are
always accepted, and the option is ignored.
6.2.12.2 Forwarding
The forwarding facility can be used to create a large site-wide cache on a
few servers, reducing traffic over links to external nameservers. It can
also be used to allow queries by servers that do not have direct access to
the Internet, but wish to look up exterior names anyway. Forwarding occurs
only on those queries for which the server is not authoritative and does not
have the answer in its cache.
forward This option is only meaningful if the forwarders list is not
empty. A value of first, the default, causes the server to
query the forwarders first, and if that doesn't answer the
question the server will then look for the answer itself. If
only is specified, the server will only query the forwarders.
forwarders Specifies the IP addresses to be used for forwarding. The
default is the empty list (no forwarding).
Forwarding can also be configured on a per-domain basis, allowing for the
global forwarding options to be overridden in a variety of ways. You can set
particular domains to use different forwarders, or have a different forward
only/first behavior, or not forward at all. See zone Statement Grammar for
more information.
6.2.12.3 Name Checking
The server can check domain names based upon their expected client contexts.
For example, a domain name used as a hostname can be checked for compliance
with the RFCs defining valid hostnames.
Three checking methods are available:
ignore No checking is done.
warn Names are checked against their expected client contexts. Invalid
names are logged, but processing continues normally.
fail Names are checked against their expected client contexts. Invalid
names are logged, and the offending data is rejected.
The server can check names in three areas: master zone files, slave zone
files, and in responses to queries the server has initiated. If check-names
response fail has been specified, and answering the client's question would
require sending an invalid name to the client, the server will send a
REFUSED response code to the client.
The defaults are:
check-names master fail;
check-names slave warn;
check-names response ignore;
check-names may also be specified in the zone statement, in which case it
overrides the options check-names statement. When used in a zone statement,
the area is not specified because it can be deduced from the zone type.
Name checking is not yet implemented in BIND 9.
6.2.12.4 Access Control
Access to the server can be restricted based on the IP address of the
requesting system. See Address Match Lists for details on how to specify IP
address lists.
allow-query Specifies which hosts are allowed to ask ordinary
questions. allow-query may also be specified in the zone
statement, in which case it overrides the options
allow-query statement. If not specified, the default is to
allow queries from all hosts.
allow-recursion Specifies which hosts are allowed to make recursive
queries through this server. If not specified, the default
is to allow recursive queries from all hosts.
allow-transfer Specifies which hosts are allowed to receive zone
transfers from the server. allow-transfer may also be
specified in the zone statement, in which case it
overrides the options allow-transfer statement. If not
specified, the default is to allow transfers from all
hosts.
blackhole Specifies a list of addresses that the server will not
accept queries from or use to resolve a query. Queries
from these addresses will not be responded to. The default
is none. Not yet implemented in BIND 9.
6.2.12.5 Interfaces
The interfaces and ports that the server will answer queries from may be
specified using the listen-on option. listen-on takes an optional port, and
an address_match_list. The server will listen on all interfaces allowed by
the address match list. If a port is not specified, port 53 will be used.
Multiple listen-on statements are allowed. For example,
listen-on { 5.6.7.8; };
listen-on port 1234 { !1.2.3.4; 1.2/16; };
will enable the nameserver on port 53 for the IP address 5.6.7.8, and on
port 1234 of an address on the machine in net 1.2 that is not 1.2.3.4.
If no listen-on is specified, the server will listen on port 53 on all
interfaces.
The listen-on-v6 option is used to specify the ports on which the server
will listen for incoming queries sent using IPv6.
The server does not bind a separate socket to each IPv6 interface address as
it does for IPv4. Instead, it always listens on the IPv6 wildcard address.
Therefore, the only values allowed for the address_match_list argument to
the listen-on-v6 statement are " { any; } " and " { none; } ".
Multiple listen-on-v6 options can be used to listen on multiple ports:
listen-on-v6 port 53 { any; };
listen-on-v6 port 1234 { any; };
To make the server not listen on any IPv6 address, use
listen-on-v6 { none; };
If no listen-on-v6 statement is specified, the server will listen on port 53
on the IPv6 wildcard address.
6.2.12.6 Query Address
If the server doesn't know the answer to a question, it will query other
nameservers. query-source specifies the address and port used for such
queries. For queries sent over IPv6, there is a separate query-source-v6
option. If address is * or is omitted, a wildcard IP address (INADDR_ANY)
will be used. If port is * or is omitted, a random unprivileged port will be
used. The defaults are
query-source address * port *;
query-source-v6 address * port *
Note: query-source currently applies only to UDP queries; TCP queries always
use a wildcard IP address and a random unprivileged port.
6.2.12.7 Zone Transfers
BIND has mechanisms in place to facilitate zone transfers and set limits on
the amount of load that transfers place on the system. The following options
apply to zone transfers.
also-notify Defines a global list of IP addresses that are also
sent NOTIFY messages whenever a fresh copy of the
zone is loaded. This helps to ensure that copies of
the zones will quickly converge on stealth servers.
If an also-notify list is given in a zone statement,
it will override the options also-notify statement.
When a zone notify statement is set to no, the IP
addresses in the global also-notify list will not be
sent NOTIFY messages for that zone. The default is
the empty list (no global notification list).
max-transfer-time-in Inbound zone transfers running longer than this many
minutes will be terminated. The default is 120
minutes (2 hours).
max-transfer-idle-in Inbound zone transfers making no progress in this
many minutes will be terminated. The default is 60
minutes (1 hour).
max-transfer-time-out Outbound zone transfers running longer than this
many minutes will be terminated. The default is 120
minutes (2 hours).
max-transfer-idle-out Outbound zone transfers making no progress in this
many minutes will be terminated. The default is 60
minutes (1 hour).
serial-queries Slave servers will periodically query master servers
to find out if zone serial numbers have changed.
Each such query uses a minute amount of the slave
server's network bandwidth, but more importantly
each query uses a small amount of memory in the
slave server while waiting for the master server to
respond. The serial-queries option sets the maximum
number of concurrent serial-number queries allowed
to be outstanding at any given time. The default is
4. Note: If a server loads a large (tens or hundreds
of thousands) number of slave zones, then this limit
should be raised to the high hundreds or low
thousands, otherwise the slave server may never
actually become aware of zone changes in the master
servers. Beware, though, that setting this limit
arbitrarily high can spend a considerable amount of
your slave server's network, CPU, and memory
resources. As with all tunable limits, this one
should be changed gently and monitored for its
effects. Not yet implemented in BIND 9.
transfer-format The server supports two zone transfer methods.
one-answer uses one DNS message per resource record
transferred. many-answers packs as many resource
records as possible into a message. many-answers is
more efficient, but is only known to be understood
by BIND 9, BIND 8.x and patched versions of
BIND 4.9.5. The default is many-answers.
transfer-format may be overridden on a per-server
basis by using the server statement.
transfers-in The maximum number of inbound zone transfers that
can be running concurrently. The default value is 10.
Increasing transfers-in may speed up the
convergence of slave zones, but it also may increase
the load on the local system.
transfers-out The maximum number of outbound zone transfers that
can be running concurrently. Zone transfer requests
in excess of the limit will be refused. The default
value is 10.
transfers-per-ns The maximum number of inbound zone transfers that
can be concurrently transferring from a given remote
nameserver. The default value is 2. Increasing
transfers-per-ns may speed up the convergence of
slave zones, but it also may increase the load on
the remote nameserver. transfers-per-ns may be
overridden on a per-server basis by using the
transfers phrase of the server statement.
transfer-source transfer-source determines which local address will
be bound to IPv4 TCP connections used to fetch zones
transferred inbound by the server. If not set, it
defaults to a system controlled value which will
usually be the address of the interface "closest to"
the remote end. This address must appear in the
remote end's allow-transfer option for the zone
being transferred, if one is specified. This
statement sets the transfer-source for all zones,
but can be overridden on a per-zone basis by
including a
transfer-source statement within the zone block in
the configuration file.
transfer-source-v6 The same as transfer-source, except zone transfers
are performed using IPv6.
6.2.12.8 Resource Limits
The server's usage of many system resources can be limited. Some operating
systems don't support some of the limits. On such systems, a warning will be
issued if the unsupported limit is used. Some operating systems don't
support limiting resources.
Scaled values are allowed when specifying resource limits. For example, 1G
can be used instead of 1073741824 to specify a limit of one gigabyte.
unlimited requests unlimited use, or the maximum available amount. default
uses the limit that was in force when the server was started. See the
description of size_spec in Configuration File Elements for more details.
coresize The maximum size of a core dump. The default is default.
Not yet implemented in BIND 9.
datasize The maximum amount of data memory the server may use.
The default is default. Not yet implemented in BIND 9.
The maximum number of files the server may have open
concurrently. The default is unlimited. Note: on some
operating systems the server cannot set an unlimited
value and cannot determine the maximum number of open
files files the kernel can support. On such systems, choosing
unlimited will cause the server to use the larger of the
rlim_max for RLIMIT_NOFILE and the value returned by
sysconf(_SC_OPEN_MAX). If the actual kernel limit is
larger than this value, use limit files to specify the
limit explicitly. Not yet implemented in BIND 9.
max-ixfr-log-size The max-ixfr-log-size will be used in a future release
of the server to limit the size of the transaction log
kept for Incremental Zone Transfer. Not yet implemented
in BIND 9.
recursive-clients The maximum number of simultaneous recursive lookups the
server will perform on behalf of clients. The default is
1000.
stacksize The maximum amount of stack memory the server may use.
The default is default. Not yet implemented in BIND 9.
tcp-clients The maximum number of simultaneous client TCP
connections that the server will accept. The default is
100.
Resource limits are not yet implemented in BIND 9.
6.2.12.9 Periodic Task Intervals
cleaning-interval The server will remove expired resource records from
the cache every cleaning-interval minutes. The default
is 60 minutes. If set to 0, no periodic cleaning will
occur.
heartbeat-interval The server will perform zone maintenance tasks for all
zones marked dialup yes whenever this interval
expires. The default is 60 minutes. Reasonable values
are up to 1 day (1440 minutes). If set to 0, no zone
maintenance for these zones will occur. Not yet
implemented in BIND 9.
interface-interval The server will scan the network interface list every
interface-interval minutes. The default is 60 minutes.
If set to 0, interface scanning will only occur when
the configuration file is loaded. After the scan,
listeners will be started on any new interfaces
(provided they are allowed by the listen-on
configuration). Listeners on interfaces that have gone
away will be cleaned up.
statistics-interval Nameserver statistics will be logged every
statistics-interval minutes. The default is 60. If
set to 0, no statistics will be logged. Not yet
implemented in BIND 9.
6.2.12.10 Topology
All other things being equal, when the server chooses a nameserver to query
from a list of nameservers, it prefers the one that is topologically closest
to itself. The topology statement takes an address_match_list and interprets
it in a special way. Each top-level list element is assigned a distance.
Non-negated elements get a distance based on their position in the list,
where the closer the match is to the start of the list, the shorter the
distance is between it and the server. A negated match will be assigned the
maximum distance from the server. If there is no match, the address will get
a distance which is further than any non-negated list element, and closer
than any negated element. For example,
topology {
10/8;
!1.2.3/24;
{ 1.2/16; 3/8; };
};
will prefer servers on network 10 the most, followed by hosts on network
1.2.0.0 (netmask 255.255.0.0) and network 3, with the exception of hosts on
network 1.2.3 (netmask 255.255.255.0), which is preferred least of all.
The default topology is
topology { localhost; localnets; };
The topology option is not yet implemented in BIND 9.
6.2.12.11 The sortlist Statement
Resource Records (RRs) are the data associated with the names in a domain
name space. The data is maintained in the form of sets of RRs. The order of
RRs in a set is, by default, not significant. Therefore, to control the
sorting of records in a set of resource records, or RRset, you must use the
sortlist statement.
RRs are explained more fully in See Types of Resource Records and When to
Use Them. Specifications for RRs are documented in RFC 1035.
When returning multiple RRs the nameserver will normally return them in
Round Robin order, that is, after each request the first RR is put at the
end of the list. The client resolver code should rearrange the RRs as
appropriate, that is, using any addresses on the local net in preference to
other addresses. However, not all resolvers can do this or are correctly
configured. When a client is using a local server the sorting can be
performed in the server, based on the client's address. This only requires
configuring the nameservers, not all the clients.
The sortlist statement (see below) takes an address_match_list and
interprets it even more specifically than the topology statement does (see
Topology). Each top level statement in the sortlist must itself be an
explicit address_match_list with one or two elements. The first element
(which may be an IP address, an IP prefix, an ACL name or a nested
address_match_list) of each top level list is checked against the source
address of the query until a match is found.
Once the source address of the query has been matched, if the top level
statement contains only one element, the actual primitive element that
matched the source address is used to select the address in the response to
move to the beginning of the response. If the statement is a list of two
elements, then the second element is treated the same as the
address_match_list in a topology statement. Each top level element is
assigned a distance and the address in the response with the minimum
distance is moved to the beginning of the response.
In the following example, any queries received from any of the addresses of
the host itself will get responses preferring addresses on any of the
locally connected networks. Next most preferred are addresses on the
192.168.1/24 network, and after that either the 192.168.2/24 or
192.168.3/24 network with no preference shown between these two networks.
Queries received from a host on the 192.168.1/24 network will prefer other
addresses on that network to the 192.168.2/24 and
192.168.3/24 networks. Queries received from a host on the 192.168.4/24 or
the 192.168.5/24 network will only prefer other addresses on their directly
connected networks.
sortlist {
{ localhost; // IF the local host
{ localnets; // THEN first fit on the
192.168.1/24; // following nets
{ 192,168.2/24; 192.168.3/24; }; }; };
{ 192.168.1/24; // IF on class C 192.168.1
{ 192.168.1/24; // THEN use .1, or .2 or .3
{ 192.168.2/24; 192.168.3/24; }; }; };
{ 192.168.2/24; // IF on class C 192.168.2
{ 192.168.2/24; // THEN use .2, or .1 or .3
{ 192.168.1/24; 192.168.3/24; }; }; };
{ 192.168.3/24; // IF on class C 192.168.3
{ 192.168.3/24; // THEN use .3, or .1 or .2
{ 192.168.1/24; 192.168.2/24; }; }; };
{ { 192.168.4/24; 192.168.5/24; };
// if .4 or .5, prefer that net
};
};
The following example will give reasonable behavior for the local host and
hosts on directly connected networks. It is similar to the behavior of the
address sort in BIND 8.x. Responses sent to queries from the local host will
favor any of the directly connected networks. Responses sent to queries from
any other hosts on a directly connected network will prefer addresses on
that same network. Responses to other queries will not be sorted.
sortlist {
{ localhost; localnets; };
{ localnets; };
};
The sortlist option is not yet implemented in BIND 9.
6.2.12.12 RRset Ordering
When multiple records are returned in an answer it may be useful to
configure the order of the records placed into the response. For example,
the records for a zone might be configured always to be returned in the
order they are defined in the zone file. Or perhaps a random shuffle of the
records as they are returned is wanted. The rrset-order statement permits
configuration of the ordering made of the records in a multiple record
response. The default, if no ordering is defined, is a cyclic ordering
(round robin).
An order_spec is defined as follows:
[ class class_name ][ type type_name ][ name "domain_name"]
order ordering
If no class is specified, the default is ANY. If no type is specified, the
default is ANY. If no name is specified, the default is "*".
The legal values for ordering are:
fixed Records are returned in the order they are defined in the zone
file.
random Records are returned in some random order.
cyclic Records are returned in a round-robin order.
For example:
rrset-order {
class IN type A name "host.example.com" order random;
order cyclic;
};
will cause any responses for type A records in class IN that have
"host.example.com" as a suffix, to always be returned in random
order. All other records are returned in cyclic order.
If multiple rrset-order statements appear, they are not combined--the last
one applies.
If no rrset-order statement is specified, then a default one of:
rrset-order { class ANY type ANY name "*"; order cyclic ;
};
is used.
The rrset-order statement is not yet implemented in BIND 9.
6.2.12.13 Tuning
lame-ttl Sets the number of seconds to cache a lame server
indication. 0 disables caching. (This is NOT
recommended.) Default is 600 (10 minutes). Maximum
value is 1800 (30 minutes). Not yet implemented in
BIND 9.
max-ncache-ttl To reduce network traffic and increase performance
the server stores negative answers. max-ncache-ttl
is used to set a maximum retention time for these
answers in the server in seconds. The default
max-ncache-ttl is 10800 seconds (3 hours).
max-ncache-ttl cannot exceed 7 days and will be
silently truncated to 7 days if set to a greater
value.
max-cache-ttl max-cache-ttl sets the maximum time for which the
server will cache ordinary (positive) answers. The
default is one week (7 days).
min-roots The minimum number of root servers that is required
for a request for the root servers to be accepted.
Default is 2. Not yet implemented in BIND 9.
sig-validity-interval Specifies the number of days into the future when
DNSSEC signatures automatically generated as a
result of dynamic updates (see Dynamic Update) will
expire. The default is 30 days. The signature
inception time is unconditionally set to one hour
before the current time to allow for a limited
amount of clock skew.
6.2.12.14 Deprecated Features
use-ixfr is deprecated in BIND 9. If you need to disable IXFR to a
particular server or servers see the information on the provide-ixfr option
in server Statement Definition and Usage. See also the description of IXFR
in the section Incremental Zone Transfers (IXFR).
6.2.13 server Statement Grammar
server ip_addr {
[ bogus yes_or_no ; ]
[ provide-ixfr yes_or_no ; ]
[ request-ixfr yes_or_no ; ]
[ transfers number ; ]
[ transfer-format ( one-answer | many-answers ) ; ]
[ keys { string ; [ string ; [...]] } ; ]
}; }
6.2.14 server Statement Definition and Usage
The server statement defines the characteristics to be associated with a
remote nameserver.
If you discover that a remote server is giving out bad data, marking it as
bogus will prevent further queries to it. The default value of bogus is no.
The bogus clause is not yet implemented in BIND 9.
The provide-ixfr clause determines whether the local server, acting as
master, will respond with an incremental zone transfer when the given remote
server, a slave, requests it. If set to yes, incremental transfer will be
provided whenever possible. If set to no, all transfers to the remote
server will be nonincremental. If not set, the value of the provide-ixfr
option in the global options block is used as a default.
The request-ixfr clause determines whether the local server, acting as a
slave, will request incremental zone transfers from the given remote server,
a master. If not set, the value of the request-ixfr option in the global
options block is used as a default.
IXFR requests to servers that do not support IXFR will automatically fall
back to AXFR. Therefore, there is no need to manually list which servers
support IXFR and which ones do not; the global default of yes should always
work. The purpose of the provide-ixfr and request-ixfr clauses is to make it
possible to disable the use of IXFR even when both master and slave claim to
support it, for example if one of the servers is buggy and crashes or
corrupts data when IXFR is used.
The server supports two zone transfer methods. The first, one-answer, uses
one DNS message per resource record transferred. many-answers packs as many
resource records as possible into a message. many-answers is more efficient,
but is only known to be understood by BIND 9, BIND 8.x, and patched versions
of BIND 4.9.5. You can specify which method to use for a server with the
transfer-format option. If transfer-format is not specified, the
transfer-format specified by the options statement will be used.
transfers is used to limit the number of concurrent inbound zone transfers
from the specified server. If no transfers clause is specified, the limit is
set according to the transfers-per-ns option.
The keys clause is used to identify a key_id defined by the key statement,
to be used for transaction security when talking to the remote server. The
key statement must come before the server statement that references it. When
a request is sent to the remote server, a request signature will be
generated using the key specified here and appended to the message. A
request originating from the remote server is not required to be signed by
this key.
Although the grammar of the keys clause allows for multiple keys, only a
single key per server is currently supported.
6.2.15 trusted-keys Statement Grammar
trusted-keys {
string number number number string ;
[ string number number number string ; [...]]
}; }
6.2.16 trusted-keys Statement Definition and Usage
The trusted-keys statement defines DNSSEC security roots. See DNSSEC for a
description. A security root is defined when the public key for a
non-authoritative zone is known, but cannot be securely obtained through
DNS, either because it is the DNS root zone or its parent zone is unsigned.
Once a key has been configured as a trusted key, it is treated as if it had
been validated and proven secure. The resolver attempts DNSSEC validation on
all DNS data in subdomains of a security root.
The trusted-keys statement can contain multiple key entries, each consisting
of the key's domain name, flags, protocol, algorithm, and the base-64
representation of the key data.
6.2.17 view Statement Grammar
view view name {
match-clients { address_match_list } ;
[view_option; ...]
[zone_statement; ...]]
};
6.2.18 view Statement Definition and Usage
The view statement is a powerful new feature of BIND 9 that lets a name
server answer a DNS query differently depending on who is asking. It is
particularly useful for implementing split DNS setups without having to run
multiple servers.
Each view statement defines a view of the DNS namespace that will be seen by
those clients whose IP addresses match the address_match_list of the view's
match-clients clause. The order of the view statements is significant--a
client query will be resolved in the context of the first view whose
match-clients list matches the client's IP address.
Zones defined within a view statement will be only be accessible to clients
that match the view. By defining a zone of the same name in multiple views,
different zone data can be given to different clients, for example,
"internal" and "external" clients in a split DNS setup.
Many of the options given in the options statement can also be used within a
view statement, and then apply only when resolving queries with that view.
When no a view-specific value is given, the value in the options statement
is used as a default. Also, zone options can have default values specified
in the view statement; these view-specific defaults take precedence over
those in the options statement.
Views are class specific. If no class is given, class IN is assumed.
If there are no view statements in the config file, a default view that
matches any client is automatically created in class IN, and any zone
statements specified on the top level of the configuration file are
considered to be part of this default view. If any explicit view statements
are present, all zone statements must occur inside view statements.
Here is an example of a typical split DNS setup implemented using view
statements.
view "internal" {
// This should match our internal networks.
match-clients { 10.0.0.0/8; };
// Provide recursive service to internal clients only.
recursion yes;
// Provide a complete view of the example.com zone
// including addresses of internal hosts.
zone "example.com" {
type master;
file "example-internal.db";
};
};
view "external" {
match-clients { any; };
// Refuse recursive service to external clients.
recursion no;
// Provide a restricted view of the example.com zone
// containing only publicly accessible hosts.
zone "example.com" {
type master;
file "example-external.db";
};
};
6.2.19 zone Statement Grammar
zone zone name [class] [{
type ( master|slave|hint|stub|forward ) ;
[ allow-query { address_match_list } ; ]
[ allow-transfer { address_match_list } ; ]
[ allow-update { address_match_list } ; ]
[ update-policy { update_policy_rule[...] } ; ]
[ allow-update-forwarding { address_match_list } ; ]
[ also-notify { [ ip_addr ; [ip_addr ; [...]]] } ; ]
[ check-names (warn|fail|ignore) ; ]
[ dialup true_or_false ; ]
[ file string ; ]
[ forward (only|first) ; ]
[ forwarders { [ ip_addr ; [ ip_addr ; [...]]] } ; ]
[ ixfr-base string ; ]
[ ixfr-tmp-file string ; ]
[ maintain-ixfr-base true_or_false ; ]
[ masters [port number] { ip_addr ; [ip_addr ; [...]] } ; ]
[ max-ixfr-log-size number ; ]
[ max-transfer-idle-in number ; ]
[ max-transfer-idle-out number ; ]
[ max-transfer-time-in number ; ]
[ max-transfer-time-out number ; ]
[ notify true_or_false ; ]
[ pubkey number number number string ; ]
[ transfer-source (ip4_addr | *) ; ]
[ transfer-source-v6 (ip6_addr | *) ; ]
[ sig-validity-interval number ; ]}]
;
6.2.20 zone Statement Definition and Usage
6.2.20.1 Zone Types
master The server has a master copy of the data for the zone and will be
able to provide authoritative answers for it.
slave A slave zone is a replica of a master zone. The masters list
specifies one or more IP addresses that the slave contacts to
update its copy of the zone. If a port is specified, the slave
then checks to see if the zone is current and zone transfers will
be done to the port given. If a file is specified, then the
replica will be written to this file whenever the zone is changed,
and reloaded from this file on a server restart. Use of a file is
recommended, since it often speeds server start-up and eliminates
a needless waste of bandwidth. Note that for large numbers (in the
tens or hundreds of thousands) of zones per server, it is best to
use a two level naming scheme for zone file names. For example, a
slave server for the zone example.com might place the zone
contents into a file called
ex/example.com where ex/ is just the first two letters of the zone
name. (Most operating systems behave very slowly if you put 100K
files into a single directory.)
stub A stub zone is similar to a slave zone, except that it replicates
only the NS records of a master zone instead of the entire zone.
Stub zones are not a standard part of the DNS; they are a
peculiarity of BIND 4 and BIND 8 that relies heavily on the
particular way the zone data is structured in those servers.
BIND 9 attempts to emulate the BIND 4/8 stub zone feature for
backwards compatibility, but we do not recommend its use in new
configurations.
In BIND 4/8, zone transfers of a parent zone included the NS
records from stub children of that zone. This meant that, in some
cases, users could get away with configuring child stubs only in
the master server for the parent zone. BIND 9 never mixes together
zone data from different zones in this way. Therefore, if a BIND 9
master serving a parent zone has child stub zones configured, all
the slave servers for the parent zone also need to have the same
child stub zones configured..
forward A "forward zone" is a way to configure forwarding on a per-domain
basis. A zone statement of type forward can contain a forward
and/or forwarders statement, which will apply to queries within
the domain given by the zone name. If no forwarders statement is
present or an empty list for forwarders is given, then no
forwarding will be done for the domain, cancelling the effects of
any forwarders in the options statement. Thus if you want to use
this type of zone to change the behavior of the global forward
option (that is, "forward first to", then "forward only", or vice
versa, but want to use the same servers as set globally) you need
to respecify the global forwarders. Domain-specific forwarding is
not yet implemented in BIND 9.
hint The initial set of root nameservers is specified using a "hint
zone". When the server starts up, it uses the root hints to find a
root nameserver and get the most recent list of root nameservers.
If no hint zone is specified for class IN, the server users a
compiled-in default set of root servers hints. Classes other than
IN have no built-in defaults hints.
6.2.20.2 Class
The zone's name may optionally be followed by a class. If a class is not
specified, class IN (for Internet), is assumed. This is correct for the
vast majority of cases.
The hesiod class is named for an information service from MIT's Project
Athena. It is used to share information about various systems databases,
such as users, groups, printers and so on. The keyword HS is a synonym for
hesiod.
Another MIT development is CHAOSnet, a LAN protocol created in the
mid-1970s. Zone data for it can be specified with the CHAOS class.
6.2.20.3 Zone Options
allow-query See the description of allow-query under Access
Control.
allow-transfer See the description of allow-transfer under Access
Control.
allow-update Specifies which hosts are allowed to submit Dynamic DNS
updates for master zones. The default is to deny updates
from all hosts.
update-policy Specifies a "Simple Secure Update" policy. See
description in Dynamic Update Policies.
allow-update-forwarding Specifies which hosts are allowed to submit
Dynamic DNS updates to slave zones to be forwarded
to the master. The default is to deny update
forwarding from all hosts. Update forwarding is
not yet implemented.
also-notify Only meaningful if notify is active for this zone. The
set of machines that will receive a DNS
NOTIFY message for this zone is made up of
all the listed nameservers (other than the
primary master) for the zone plus any IP
addresses specified with also-notify.
also-notify is not meaningful for stub
zones. The default is the empty list.
check-names See Name Checking.
Not yet implemented in BIND 9.
dialup See the description of dialup under Boolean
Options.
Not yet implemented in BIND 9.
forward Only meaningful if the zone has a forwarders list.
The only value causes the lookup to fail after
trying the forwarders and getting no answer, while
first would allow a normal lookup to be tried.
Not yet implemented in BIND 9.
forwarders Used to override the list of global forwarders. If
it is not specified in a zone of type forward, no
forwarding is done for the zone; the global
options are not used.
Not yet implemented in BIND 9.
ixfr-base Was used in BIND 8 to specify the name of the
transaction log (journal) file for dynamic update
and IXFR. BIND 9 ignores the option and constructs
the name of the journal file by appending ".jnl"
to the name of the zone file.
max-transfer-time-in See the description of
max-transfer-time-in under Zone Transfers.
max-transfer-idle-in See the description of
max-transfer-idle-in under Zone Transfers.
max-transfer-time-out See the description of
max-transfer-time-out under Zone Transfers.
max-transfer-idle-out See the description of
max-transfer-idle-out under Zone Transfers.
notify See the description of notify under Boolean
Options.
pubkey In BIND 8, this option was intended for specifying
a public zone key for verification of signatures
in DNSSEC signed zones when they are loaded from
disk. BIND 9 does not verify signatures on loading
and ignores the option.
sig-validity-interval See the description of sig-validity-interval in
Tuning.
transfer-source Determines which local address will be bound
to the IPv4 TCP connection used to fetch this
zone. If not set, it defaults to a system
controlled value which will
usually be the address of the interface
"closest to" the remote end. If the remote
end user is an allow-transfer option for
this zone, the address, supplied by the
transfer-source option, needs to be specified
in that allow-transfer option.
transfer-source-v6 Similar to transfer-source, but for zone transfers
performed using IPv6.
6.2.20.4 Dynamic Update Policies
BIND 9 supports two alternative methods of granting clients the right to
perform dynamic updates to a zone, configured by the allow-update and
update-policy option, respectively.
The allow-update clause works the same way as in previous versions of BIND.
It grants given clients the permission to update any record of any name in
the zone.
The update-policy clause is new in BIND 9 and allows more fine-grained
control over what updates are allowed. A set of rules is specified, where
each rule either grants or denies permissions for one or more names to be
updated by one or more identities. If the dynamic update request message is
signed (that is, it includes either a TSIG or SIG(0) record), the identity
of the signer can be determined.
Rules are specified in the update-policy zone option, and are only
meaningful for master zones. When the update-policy statement is present, it
is a configuration error for the allow-update statement to be present. The
update-policy statement only examines the signer of a message; the source
address is not relevant.
This is how a rule definition looks:
( grant | deny ) identity nametype name [ types ]
Each rule grants or denies privileges. Once a messages has successfully
matched a rule, the operation is immediately granted or denied and no
further rules are examined. A rule is matched when the signer matches the
identity field, the name matches the name field, and the type is specified
in the type field.
The identity field specifies a name or a wildcard name. The nametype field
has 4 values: name, subdomain, wildcard, and self.
name Matches when the updated name is the same as the name in the
name field.
subdomain Matches when the updated name is a subdomain of the name in the
name field.
wildcard Matches when the updated name is a valid expansion of the
wildcard name in the name field.
self Matches when the updated name is the same as the message signer.
The name field is ignored.
If no types are specified, the rule matches all types except SIG, NS, SOA,
and NXT. Types may be specified by name, including "ANY" (ANY matches all
types except NXT, which can never be updated).
6.3 Zone File
6.3.1 Types of Resource Records and When to Use Them
This section, largely borrowed from RFC 1034, describes the concept of a
Resource Record (RR) and explains when each is used. Since the publication
of RFC 1034, several new RRs have been identified and implemented in the
DNS. These are also included.
6.3.1.1 Resource Records
A domain name identifies a node. Each node has a set of resource
information, which may be empty. The set of resource information associated
with a particular name is composed of separate RRs. The order of RRs in a
set is not significant and need not be preserved by nameservers, resolvers,
or other parts of the DNS. However, sorting of multiple RRs is permitted for
optimization purposes, for example, to specify that a particular nearby
server be tried first. See The sortlist Statement and RRset Ordering for
details.
The components of a Resource Record are
owner namethe domain name where the RR is found.
type an encoded 16 bit value that specifies the type of the resource
in this resource record. Types refer to abstract resources.
the time to live of the RR. This field is a 32 bit integer in
TTL units of seconds, and is primarily used by resolvers when they
cache RRs. The TTL describes how long a RR can be cached before
it should be discarded.
class an encoded 16 bit value that identifies a protocol family or
instance of a protocol.
RDATA the type and sometimes class-dependent data that describes the
resource.
The following are types of valid RRs (some of these listed, although not
obsolete, are experimental (x) or historical (h) and no longer in general
use):
A a host address.
A6 an IPv6 address.
AAAA Obsolete format of IPv6 address
AFSDB(x) location of AFS database servers. Experimental.
CNAME identifies the canonical name of an alias.
DNAME for delegation of reverse addresses. Replaces the domain name
specified with another name to be looked up. Described in RFC 2672.
HINFO identifies the CPU and OS used by a host.
ISDN (x) representation of ISDN addresses. Experimental.
KEY stores a public key associated with a DNS name.
LOC (x) for storing GPS info. See RFC 1876. Experimental.
MX identifies a mail exchange for the domain. See RFC 974 for details.
NS the authoritative nameserver for the domain.
used in DNSSEC to securely indicate that RRs with an owner name in a
NXT certain name interval do not exist in a zone and indicate what RR
types are present for an existing name. See RFC 2535 for details.
PTR a pointer to another part of the domain name space.
RP (x) information on persons responsible for the domain. Experimental.
RT (x) route-through binding for hosts that do not have their own direct
wide area network addresses. Experimental.
SIG ("signature") contains data authenticated in the secure DNS. See RFC
2535 for details.
SOA identifies the start of a zone of authority.
SRV information about well known network services (replaces WKS).
WKS (h) information about which well known network services, such as
SMTP, that a domain supports. Historical, replaced by newer RR SRV.
X25 (x) representation of X.25 network addresses. Experimental.
The following classes of resource records are currently valid in the DNS:
IN the Internet system.
For information about other, older classes of RRs, see Classes of Resource
Records in the Appendix.
RDATA is the type-dependent or class-dependent data that describes the
resource:
A for the IN class, a 32 bit IP address.
A6 maps a domain name to an IPv6 address, with a provision for
indirection for leading "prefix" bits.
CNAME a domain name.
provides alternate naming to an entire subtree of the domain name
DNAME space, rather than to a single node. It causes some suffix of a
queried name to be substituted with a name from the DNAME record's
RDATA.
MX a 16 bit preference value (lower is better) followed by a host name
willing to act as a mail exchange for the owner domain.
NS a fully qualified domain name.
PTR a fully qualified domain name.
SOA several fields.
The owner name is often implicit, rather than forming an integral part of
the RR. For example, many nameservers internally form tree or hash
structures for the name space, and chain RRs off nodes. The remaining RR
parts are the fixed header (type, class, TTL) which is consistent for all
RRs, and a variable part (RDATA) that fits the needs of the resource being
described.
The meaning of the TTL field is a time limit on how long an RR can be kept
in a cache. This limit does not apply to authoritative data in zones; it is
also timed out, but by the refreshing policies for the zone. The TTL is
assigned by the administrator for the zone where the data originates. While
short TTLs can be used to minimize caching, and a zero TTL prohibits
caching, the realities of Internet performance suggest that these times
should be on the order of days for the typical host. If a change can be
anticipated, the TTL can be reduced prior to the change to minimize
inconsistency during the change, and then increased back to its former value
following the change.
The data in the RDATA section of RRs is carried as a combination of binary
strings and domain names. The domain names are frequently used as "pointers"
to other data in the DNS.
6.3.1.2 Textual expression of RRs
RRs are represented in binary form in the packets of the DNS protocol, and
are usually represented in highly encoded form when stored in a nameserver
or resolver. In the examples provided in RFC 1034, a style similar to that
used in master files was employed in order to show the contents of RRs. In
this format, most RRs are shown on a single line, although continuation
lines are possible using parentheses.
The start of the line gives the owner of the RR. If a line begins with a
blank, then the owner is assumed to be the same as that of the previous RR.
Blank lines are often included for readability.
Following the owner, we list the TTL, type, and class of the RR. Class and
type use the mnemonics defined above, and TTL is an integer before the type
field. In order to avoid ambiguity in parsing, type and class mnemonics are
disjoint, TTLs are integers, and the type mnemonic is always last. The IN
class and TTL values are often omitted from examples in the interests of
clarity.
The resource data or RDATA section of the RR are given using knowledge of
the typical representation for the data.
For example, we might show the RRs carried in a message as:
ISI.EDU. MX 10 VENERA.ISI.EDU.
MX 10 VAXA.ISI.EDU
VENERA.ISI.EDU A 128.9.0.32
A 10.1.0.52
VAXA.ISI.EDU A 10.2.0.27
A 128.9.0.33
The MX RRs have an RDATA section which consists of a 16 bit number followed
by a domain name. The address RRs use a standard IP address format to
contain a 32 bit internet address.
This example shows six RRs, with two RRs at each of three domain names.
Similarly we might see:
XX.LCS.MIT.EDU. IN A 10.0.0.44
CH A MIT.EDU. 2420
This example shows two addresses for XX.LCS.MIT.EDU, each of a different
class.
6.3.2 Discussion of MX Records
As described above, domain servers store information as a series of resource
records, each of which contains a particular piece of information about a
given domain name (which is usually, but not always, a host). The simplest
way to think of a RR is as a typed pair of datum, a domain name matched with
relevant data, and stored with some additional type information to help
systems determine when the RR is relevant.
MX records are used to control delivery of email. The data specified in the
record is a priority and a domain name. The priority controls the order in
which email delivery is attempted, with the lowest number first. If two
priorities are the same, a server is chosen randomly. If no servers at a
given priority are responding, the mail transport agent will fall back to
the next largest priority. Priority numbers do not have any absolute meaning
- they are relevant only respective to other MX records for that domain
name. The domain name given is the machine to which the mail will be
delivered. It must have an associated A record--a CNAME is not sufficient.
For a given domain, if there is both a CNAME record and an MX record, the MX
record is in error, and will be ignored. Instead, the mail will be delivered
to the server specified in the MX record pointed to by the CNAME.
For example:
example.com. IN MX 10 mail.example.com.
IN MX 10 mail2.example.com.
IN MX 20 mail.backup.org.
mail.example.com. IN A 10.0.0.1
mail2.example.com. IN A 10.0.0.2
Mail delivery will be attempted to mail.example.com and mail2.example.com
(in any order), and if neither of those succeed, delivery to mail.backup.org
will be attempted.
6.3.3 Setting TTLs
The time to live of the RR field is a 32 bit integer represented in units of
seconds, and is primarily used by resolvers when they cache RRs. The TTL
describes how long a RR can be cached before it should be discarded. The
following three types of TTL are currently used in a zone file.
SOA The last field in the SOA is the negative caching TTL. This
controls how long other servers will cache no-such-domain
(NXDOMAIN) responses from you.
The maximum time for negative caching is 3 hours (3h).
$TTL The $TTL directive at the top of the zone file (before the SOA)
gives a default TTL for every RR without a specific TTL set.
RR TTLs Each RR can have a TTL as the second field in the RR, which will
control how long other servers can cache the it.
All of these TTLs default to units of seconds, though units can be
explicitly specified, for example, 1h30m.
6.3.4 Inverse Mapping in IPv4
Reverse name resolution (that is, translation from IP address to name) is
achieved by means of the in-addr.arpa domain and PTR records. Entries in the
in-addr.arpa domain are made in least-to-most significant order, read left
to right. This is the opposite order to the way IP addresses are usually
written. Thus, a machine with an IP address of 10.1.2.3 would have a
corresponding in-addr.arpa name of
3.2.1.10.in-addr.arpa. This name should have a PTR resource record whose
data field is the name of the machine or, optionally, multiple PTR records
if the machine has more than one name. For example, in the example.com
domain:
$ORIGIN 2.1.10.in-addr.arpa
3 IN PTR foo.example.com.
(Note: The $ORIGIN lines in the examples are for providing context to the
examples only--they do not necessarily appear in the actual usage. They are
only used here to indicate that the example is relative to the listed
origin.)
6.3.5 Other Zone File Directives
The Master File Format was initially defined in RFC 1035 and has
subsequently been extended. While the Master File Format itself is class
independent all records in a Master File must be of the same class.
Master File Directives include $ORIGIN, $INCLUDE, and $TTL.
6.3.5.1 The $ORIGIN Directive
Syntax: $ORIGIN < domain-name > [ < comment > ]
$ORIGIN sets the domain name that will be appended to any unqualified
records. When a zone is first read in there is an implicit $ORIGIN
<zone-name>. The current $ORIGIN is appended to the domain specified
in the $ORIGIN argument if it is not absolute.
$ORIGIN example.com
WWW CNAME MAIN-SERVER
is equivalent to
WWW.EXAMPLE.COM CNAME MAIN-SERVER.EXAMPLE.COM.
6.3.5.2 The $INCLUDE Directive
Syntax: $INCLUDE < filename > [ < origin > ] [ < comment > ]
Read and process the file filename as if it were included into the file at
this point. If origin is specified the file is processed with $ORIGIN set to
that value, otherwise the current $ORIGIN is used.
NOTE: The behavior when origin is specified differs from that described in
RFC 1035. The origin and current domain revert to the values they were prior
to the $INCLUDE once the file has been read.
6.3.5.3 The $TTL Directive
Syntax: $TTL < default-ttl > [ < comment > ]
Set the default Time To Live (TTL) for subsequent records with undefined
TTLs. Valid TTLs are of the range 0-2147483647 seconds.
$TTL is defined in RFC 2308.
6.3.6 BIND Master File Extension: the $GENERATE Directive
$GENERATE
Syntax: $GENERATE < range > < lhs > < type > < rhs > [ < comment > ]
$GENERATE is used to create a series of resource records that only differ
from each other by an iterator. $GENERATE can be used to easily generate the
sets of records required to support sub /24 reverse delegations described in
RFC 2317: Classless IN-ADDR.ARPA delegation.
$ORIGIN 0.0.192.IN-ADDR.ARPA.
$GENERATE 1-2 0 NS SERVER$.EXAMPLE.
$GENERATE 1-127 $ CNAME $.0
is equivalent to
0.0.0.192.IN-ADDR.ARPA NS SERVER1.EXAMPLE.
0.0.0.192.IN-ADDR.ARPA NS SERVER2.EXAMPLE.
1.0.0.192.IN-ADDR.ARPA CNAME 1.0.0.0.192.IN-ADDR.ARPA
2.0.0.192.IN-ADDR.ARPA CNAME 2.0.0.0.192.IN-ADDR.ARPA
...
127.0.0.192.IN-ADDR.ARPA CNAME 127.0.0.0.192.IN-ADDR.ARPA
.
range This can be one of two forms: start-stop or start-stop/step. If the
first form is used then step is set to 1. All of start, stop and
step must be positive.
lhs lhs describes the owner name of the resource records to be created.
Any single $ symbols within the lhs side are replaced by the
iterator value. To get a $ in the output use a double $, e.g. $$.
If the lhs is not absolute, the current $ORIGIN is appended to the
name.
type At present the only supported types are PTR, CNAME and NS.
rhs rhs is a domain name. It is processed similarly to lhs.
The $GENERATE directive is a BIND extension and not part of the standard
zone file format. It is not yet implemented in BIND 9.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Section 7. BIND 9 Security Considerations
7.1 Access Control Lists
Access Control Lists (ACLs), are address match lists that you can set up and
nickname for future use in allow-query, allow-recursion, blackhole,
allow-transfer, etc.
Using ACLs allows you to have finer control over who can access your
nameserver, without cluttering up your config files with huge lists of IP
addresses.
It is a good idea to use ACLs, and to control access to your server.
Limiting access to your server by outside parties can help prevent spoofing
and DoS attacks against your server.
Here is an example of how to properly apply ACLs:
// Set up an ACL named "bogusnets" that will block RFC1918 space,
// which is commonly used in spoofing attacks.
acl bogusnets { 0.0.0.0/8; 1.0.0.0/8; 2.0.0.0/8; 192.0.2.0/24; 224.0.0.0/3;
10.0.0.0/8; 172.16.0.0/12; 192.168.0.0/16; };
// Set up an ACL called our-nets. Replace this with the real IP numbers.
acl our-nets { x.x.x.x/24; x.x.x.x/21; };
options {
...
...
allow-query { our-nets; };
allow-recursion { our-nets; };
...
blackhole { bogusnets; };
...
};
zone "example.com" {
type master;
file "m/example.com";
allow-query { any; };
};
This allows recursive queries of the server from the outside unless
recursion has been previously disabled.
For more information on how to use ACLs to protect your server, see the
AUSCERT advisory at
ftp://ftp.auscert.org.au/pub/auscert/advisory/AL-1999.004.dns_dos
7.2 chroot and setuid (for UNIX servers)
On UNIX servers, it is possible to run BIND in a chrooted environment (
chroot() ) by specifying the "-t" option. This can help improve system
security by placing BIND in a "sandbox," which will limit the damage done if
a server is compromised.
Another useful feature in the UNIX version of BIND is the ability to run the
daemon as a nonprivileged user (-u user). We suggest running as a
nonprivileged user when using the chroot feature.
Here is an example command line to load BIND in a chroot() sandbox,
/var/named, and to run named setuid to user 202:
/usr/local/bin/named -u 202 -t /var/named
7.2.1 The chroot Environment
In order for a chroot() environment to work properly in a particular
directory (for example, /var/named), you will need to set up an environment
that includes everything BIND needs to run. From BIND's point of view,
/var/named is the root of the filesystem. You will need /dev/null, and any
library directories and files that BIND needs to run on your system. Please
consult your operating system's instructions if you need help figuring out
which library files you need to copy over to the chroot() sandbox.
If you are running an operating system that supports static binaries, you
can also compile BIND statically and avoid the need to copy system libraries
over to your chroot() sandbox.
7.2.2 Using the setuid Function
Prior to running the named daemon, use the touch utility (to change file
access and modification times) or the chown utility (to set the user id
and/or group id) on files to which you want BIND to write.
7.3 Dynamic Updates
Access to the dynamic update facility should be strictly limited. In earlier
versions of BIND the only way to do this was based on the IP address of the
host requesting the update. BIND 9BIND 9 also supports authenticating
updates cryptographically by means of transaction signatures (TSIG). The use
of TSIG is strongly recommended.
Some sites choose to keep all dynamically updated DNS data in a subdomain
and delegate that subdomain to a separate zone. This way, the top-level zone
containing critical data such as the IP addresses of public web and mail
servers need not allow dynamic update at all.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Section 8. Troubleshooting
8.1 Common Problems
8.1.1 It's not working; how can I figure out what's wrong?
The best solution to solving installation and configuration issues is to
take preventative measures by setting up logging files beforehand. (See the
sample configurations) in Section 3. The log files provide a source of hints
and information that can be used to figure out what went wrong and how to
fix the problem.
8.2 Incrementing and Changing the Serial Number
Zone serial numbers are just numbers--they aren't date related. A lot of
people set them to a number that represents a date, usually of the form
YYYYMMDDRR. A number of people have been testing these numbers for Y2K
compliance and have set the number to the year 2000 to see if it will work.
They then try to restore the old serial number. This will cause problems
because serial numbers are used to indicate that a zone has been updated. If
the serial number on the slave server is lower than the serial number on the
master, the slave server will attempt to update its copy of the zone.
Setting the serial number to a lower number on the master server than the
slave server means that the slave will not perform updates to its copy of
the zone.
The solution to this is to add 2147483647 (2^31-1) to the number, reload the
zone and make sure all slaves have updated to the new zone serial number,
then reset the number to what you want it to be, and reload the zone again.
8.3 Where Can I Get Help?
The Internet Software Consortium (ISC) offers a wide range of support and
service agreements for BIND and DHCP servers. Four levels of premium support
are available and each level includes support for all ISC programs,
significant discounts on products and training, and a recognized priority on
bug fixes and non-funded feature requests. In addition, ISC offers a
standard support agreement package which includes services ranging from bug
fix announcements to remote support. It also includes training in BIND and
DHCP.
To discuss arrangements for support, contact info@isc.org or visit the ISC
web page at
http://www.isc.org/services/support/ to read more.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
APPENDICES
Acknowledgements
A Brief History of the DNS and BIND
Although the "official" beginning of the Domain Name System occurred in 1984
with the publication of RFC 920, the core of the new system was described in
1983 in RFCs 882 and 883. From 1984 to 1987, the ARPAnet (the precursor to
today's Internet) became a testbed of experimentation for developing the new
naming/addressing scheme in an rapidly expanding, operational network
environment. New RFCs were written and published in 1987 that modified the
original documents to incorporate improvements based on the working model.
RFC 1034, "Domain Names-Concepts and Facilities," and RFC 1035, "Domain
Names-Implementation and Specification" were published and became the
standards upon which all DNS implementations are built.
The first working domain name server, called "Jeeves," was written in
1983-84 by Paul Mockapetris for operation on DEC Tops-20 machines located at
the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute
(USC-ISI) and SRI International's Network Information Center (SRI-NIC). A
DNS server for Unix machines, the Berkeley Internet Name Domain (BIND)
package, was written soon after by a group of graduate students at the
University of California at Berkeley under a grant from the US Defense
Advanced Research Projects Administration (DARPA). Versions of BIND through
4.8.3 were maintained by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at UC
Berkeley. Douglas Terry, Mark Painter, David Riggle and Songnian Zhou made
up the initial BIND project team. After that, additional work on the
software package was done by Ralph Campbell. Kevin Dunlap, a Digital
Equipment Corporation employee on loan to the CSRG, worked on BIND for 2
years, from 1985 to 1987. Many other people also contributed to BIND
development during that time: Doug Kingston, Craig Partridge, Smoot
Carl-Mitchell, Mike Muuss, Jim Bloom and Mike Schwartz. BIND maintenance was
subsequently handled by Mike Karels and O. Kure.
BIND versions 4.9 and 4.9.1 were released by Digital Equipment Corporation
(now Compaq Computer Corporation). Paul Vixie, then a DEC employee, became
BIND's primary caretaker. Paul was assisted by Phil Almquist, Robert Elz,
Alan Barrett, Paul Albitz, Bryan Beecher, Andrew Partan, Andy Cherenson, Tom
Limoncelli, Berthold Paffrath, Fuat Baran, Anant Kumar, Art Harkin, Win
Treese, Don Lewis, Christophe Wolfhugel, and others.
BIND Version 4.9.2 was sponsored by Vixie Enterprises. Paul Vixie became
BIND's principal architect/programmer.
BIND versions from 4.9.3 onward have been developed and maintained by the
Internet Software Consortium with support being provided by ISC's sponsors.
As co-architects/programmers, Bob Halley and Paul Vixie released the first
production-ready version of BIND version 8 in May 1997.
BIND development work is made possible today by the sponsorship of several
corporations, and by the tireless work efforts of numerous individuals.
Historical DNS Information
Classes of Resource Records
HS = hesiod
The hesiod class is an information service developed by MIT's Project
Athena. It is used to share information about various systems databases,
such as users, groups, printers and so on. The keyword hs is a synonym for
hesiod.
CH = chaos
The chaos class is used to specify zone data for the MIT-developed CHAOSnet,
a LAN protocol created in the mid-1970s.
General DNS Reference Information
IPv6 addresses (A6)
IPv6 addresses are 128-bit identifiers for interfaces and sets of interfaces
which were introduced in the DNS to facilitate scalable Internet routing.
There are three types of addresses: Unicast, an identifier for a single
interface; Anycast, an identifier for a set of interfaces; and Multicast,
an identifier for a set of interfaces. Here we describe the global Unicast
address scheme. For more information, see RFC 2374.
The aggregatable global Unicast address format is as follows:
3 13 8 24 16 64 bits
FP TLA ID RES NLA ID SLA ID Interface ID
<-- Public Topology -->
<-Site Topology->
<- Interface Identifier ->
Where
FP = Format Prefix (001)
TLA ID = Top-Level Aggregation Identifier
RES = Reserved for future use
NLA ID = Next-Level Aggregation Identifier
SLA ID = Site-Level Aggregation Identifier
INTERFACE ID = Interface Identifier
The Public Topology is provided by the upstream provider or ISP, and
(roughly) corresponds to the IPv4 network section of the address range. The
Site Topology is where you can subnet this space, much the same as
subnetting an IPv4 /16 network into /24 subnets. The Interface
Identifier is the address of an individual interface on a given network.
(With IPv6, addresses belong to interfaces rather than machines.)
The subnetting capability of IPv6 is much more flexible than that of IPv4:
subnetting can now be carried out on bit boundaries, in much the same way as
Classless InterDomain Routing (CIDR).
The internal structure of the Public Topology for an A6 global unicast
address consists of:
3 13 8 24
FP TLA ID RES NLA ID
A 3 bit FP (Format Prefix) of 001 indicates this is a global Unicast
address. FP lengths for other types of addresses may vary.
13 TLA (Top Level Aggregator) bits give the prefix of your top-level IP
backbone carrier.
8 Reserved bits
24 bits for Next Level Aggregators. This allows organizations with a TLA to
hand out portions of their IP space to client organizations, so that the
client can then split up the network further by filling in more NLA bits,
and hand out IPv6 prefixes to their clients, and so forth.
There is no particular structure for the Site topology section.
Organizations can allocate these bits in any way they desire.
The Interface Identifier must be unique on that network. On ethernet
networks, one way to ensure this is to set the address to the first three
bytes of the hardware address, "FFFE", then the last three bytes of the
hardware address. The lowest significant bit of the first byte should then
be complemented. Addresses are written as 32-bit blocks separated with a
colon, and leading zeros of a block may be omitted, for example:
3ffe:8050:201:9:a00:20ff:fe81:2b32
IPv6 address specifications are likely to contain long strings of zeros, so
the architects have included a shorthand for specifying them. The double
colon ('::') indicates the longest possible string of zeros that can fit,
and can be used only once in an address.
Bibliography (and Suggested Reading)
Request for Comments (RFCs)
Specification documents for the Internet protocol suite, including the DNS,
are published as part of the Request for Comments (RFCs) series of technical
notes. The standards themselves are defined by the Internet Engineering Task
Force (IETF) and the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). RFCs can be
obtained online via FTP at
ftp://www.isi.edu/in-notes/RFCxxx.txt (where xxx is the number of the RFC).
RFCs are also available via the Web at http://www.ietf.org/rfc/.
Standards
RFC974. Partridge, C. Mail Routing and the Domain System. January 1986.
RFC1034. Mockapetris, P.V. Domain Names - Concepts and Facilities. P.V.
November 1987.
RFC1035. Mockapetris, P. V. Domain Names - Implementation and Specification
. November 1987.
Proposed Standards
RFC2181. Elz, R., R. Bush. Clarifications to the DNS Specification. July
1997.
RFC2308. Andrews, M. Negative Caching of DNS Queries. March 1998.
RFC1995. Ohta, M. Incremental Zone Transfer in DNS. August 1996.
RFC1996. Vixie, P. A Mechanism for Prompt Notification of Zone Changes.
August 1996.
RFC2136. Vixie, P., S. Thomson, Y. Rekhter, J. Bound. Dynamic Updates in the
Domain Name System. April 1997.
RFC2845. Vixie, P., O. Gudmundsson, D. Eastlake 3rd, B. Wellington. Secret
Key Transaction Authentication for DNS (TSIG). May 2000.
Proposed Standards Still Under Development
Note: the following list of RFCs are undergoing major revision by the IETF.
RFC1886. Thomson, S., C. Huitema. DNS Extensions to support IP version 6.
S. December 1995.
RFC2065. Eastlake, 3rd, D., C. Kaufman. Domain Name System Security
Extensions. January 1997.
RFC2137. Eastlake, 3rd, D. Secure Domain Name System Dynamic Update. April
1997.
Other Important RFCs About DNS Implementation
RFC1535. Gavron, E. A Security Problem and Proposed Correction With Widely
Deployed DNS Software. October 1993.
RFC1536. Kumar, A., J. Postel, C. Neuman, P. Danzig, S. Miller. Common DNS
Implementation Errors and Suggested Fixes. October 1993.
RFC1982. Elz, R., R. Bush. Serial Number Arithmetic. August 1996.
Resource Record Types
RFC1183. Everhart, C.F., L. A. Mamakos, R. Ullmann, P. Mockapetris. New DNS
RR Definitions. October 1990.
RFC1706. Manning, B., R. Colella. DNS NSAP Resource Records. October 1994.
RFC2168. Daniel, R., M. Mealling. Resolution of Uniform Resource Identifiers
using the Domain Name System. June 1997.
RFC1876. Davis, C., P. Vixie, T. Goodwin, I. Dickinson. A Means for
Expressing Location Information in the Domain Name System. January 1996.
RFC2052. Gulbrandsen, A., P. Vixie. A DNS RR for Specifying the Location of
Services. October 1996.
RFC2163. Allocchio, A. U sing the Internet DNS to Distribute MIXER
Conformant Global Address Mapping. January 1998.
RFC2230. Atkinson, R. Key Exchange Delegation Record for the DNS. October
1997.
DNS and the Internet
RFC1101. Mockapetris, P. V. DNS Encoding of Network Names and Other Types.
April 1989.
RFC1123. Braden, R. Requirements for Internet Hosts - Application and
Support. October 1989.
RFC1591. Postel, J. D omain Name System Structure and Delegation. March
1994.
RFC2317. Eidnes, H., G. de Groot, P. Vixie. Classless IN-ADDR.ARPA
Delegation. March 1998.
DNS Operations
RFC1537. Beertema, P. Common DNS Data File Configuration Errors. October
1993.
RFC1912. Barr, D. Common DNS Operational and Configuration Errors. February
1996.
RFC1912. Barr, D. Common DNS Operational and Configuration Errors. February
1996.
RFC2010. Manning, B., P. Vixie. Operational Criteria for Root Name Servers.
October 1996.
RFC2219. Hamilton, M., R. Wright. Use of DNS Aliases for Network Services.
October 1997.
Other DNS-related RFCs
Note: the following list of RFCs, although DNS-related, are not concerned
with implementing software.
RFC1464. Rosenbaum, R. Using the Domain Name System To Store Arbitrary
String Attributes. May 1993.
RFC1713. Romao, A. Tools for DNS Debugging. November 1994.
RFC1794. Brisco, T. DNS Support for Load Balancing. April 1995.
RFC2240. Vaughan, O. A Legal Basis for Domain Name Allocation.
November1997.
RFC2345. Klensin, J., T. Wolf, G. Oglesby. Domain Names and Company Name
Retrieval. May 1998.
RFC2352. Vaughan, O. A Convention For Using Legal Names as Domain Names.
May 1998.
Obsolete and Unimplemented Experimental RRs
RFC1712. Farrell, C., M. Schulze, S. Pleitner, D. Baldoni. DNS Encoding of
Geographical Location. November 1994.
Internet Drafts
Internet Drafts (IDs) are rough-draft working documents of the Internet
Engineering Task Force. They are, in essence, RFCs in the preliminary stages
of development. Implementors are cautioned not to regard IDs as archival,
and they should not be quoted or cited in any formal documents unless
accompanied by the disclaimer that they are "works in progress." IDs have a
lifespan of six months after which they are deleted unless updated by their
authors.
Other BIND Documents
Albitz, Paul and Cricket Liu. 1998. DNS and BIND. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly
and Associates.
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