TCP/IP Network Administration, 3rd Edition

Appendix C. A named Reference

This appendix provides detailed information about named syntax and the commands and files used to configure it. This is primarily a reference to use in conjunction with the tutorial information in Chapter 8. This information is useful to any domain administrator.

The named Command

The server side of DNS is run by the name server daemon, named. The syntax of the named command is:^[157]

named [-d level] [-p port] [[-b|c] configfile] [-q -r -f -v] [-u username] 
[-g groupname] [-t path] [-w path] [configfile]

The options used on the named command line are:

-d level

Logs debugging information in the file named.run. The argument level is a number from 1 to 11. A higher level number increases the detail of the information logged, but even when level is set to 1, the named.run file grows very rapidly. Whenever you use debugging, keep an eye on the size of the named.run file and use ndc notrace or SIGUSR2 to close the file if it gets too large. Signal handling is covered in the next section.

It is not necessary to turn on debugging with the -d option to receive error messages from named. named displays error messages on the console and stores them in the messages, even if debugging is not specified. The -d option provides additional debugging information.

-p port

Defines the UDP/TCP port used by named. port is the port number used to connect to the remote name server. If the -p option is not specified, the standard port (53) is used. Since port 53 is a well-known port, ...