ITEM: G2404L

The named daemon will not remain operational

Question:

I start named and it will not remain running. How can I determine what
is wrong?

Response:

To determine what is wrong with the nameserver when it will not stay
running. Issue:

> /usr/tmp/named.run 
> /usr/tmp/xfer.trace 
startsrc -s named -a "-d 9"

The startsrc command with the debug option 9 will load information
regarding the zone transfers into xfer.trace and named database loads
and general operation into named.run. Review the contents of
named.run to see why named will not remain operational:

In this case, named.run reported that it could not db_load the
/etc/named.rev file and that there was an error on line 7 of that file.

Line 7 of /etc/named.rev can be found by issuing:

vi /etc/named.rev 

The problem was with the format of the Start Of Authority (SOA) record
in the .rev file. Specifically in this case, the customer was missing
the serial number in the start of authority record:

@               9999999 IN      SOA     hostname.aix.dfw.ibm.com.
root.hostname.  aix.dfw.ibm.com. (
                                        1.1             ; Serial
                                        3600            ; Refresh
                                        300             ; Retry
                                        3600000         ; Expire
                                        86400 )         ; Minimum

When the named resolver read the named.rev file it reported line 7
since that is the end of the SOA record, as indicated by the ) symbol.
The named daemon took each number in the SOA record and came up short
by one number on line 7.

We then verified the serial number in the SOA record of the named.data
file and added the serial number entry to the named.rev file with the 
same serial number value as was in the named.data file to the first
line after the opening parenthesis in the SOA record.

Once this change was implemented named was able to successfully start
and stay running.



Support Line: The named daemon will not remain operational ITEM: G2404L

Dated: January 1994 Category: N/A

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