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-notify, 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.

6.1.2.1. 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.

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 destination clause that says whether messages selected for the channel go to a file, to a particular syslog facility, to the standard error stream, 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 null destination clause causes all messages sent to the channel to be discarded; in that case, other options for the channel are meaningless.

The file destination clause directs the channel to a disk file. It 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.

If you use the versions 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. You can say versions unlimited; to not limit the number of versions. If a size option is associated with the log file, then renaming is only done when the file being opened exceeds the indicated size. No backup versions are kept by default; any existing log file is simply appended.

The size option for files is used to limit log growth. If the file ever exceeds the size, then named will stop writing to the file unless it has a versions option associated with it. If backup versions are kept, the files are rolled as described above and a new one begun. If there is no versions option, no more data will be written to the log until some out-of-band mechanism removes or truncates the log to less than the maximum size. The default behavior is not to limit the size of the file.

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 syslog destination clause directs the channel to the system log. Its argument 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 stderr destination clause directs the channel to the server's standard error stream. This is intended for use when the server is running as a foreground process, for example when debugging a configuration.

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 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 Section 6.2.10.2.

channel "default_syslog" {
    syslog daemon;                      // send 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
    stderr;
    severity info;                      // only send priority info
                                        // and higher
};

channel "null" {
   null;                                // toss anything sent to
                                        // this channel
};

The default_debug channel has the special property that it only produces output when the server's debug level is nonzero. It 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.

6.2.14.1. Boolean Options

6.2.14.2. 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.

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 Section 6.2.21.

6.2.14.3. Access Control

Access to the server can be restricted based on the IP address of the requesting system. See Section 6.1.1 for details on how to specify IP address lists.

6.2.14.4. 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; }

{ 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 not listen on any IPv6 address.

6.2.14.5. 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 *

6.2.14.6. 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.

6.2.14.7. Operating System Resource Limits

The server's usage of many system resources can be limited. 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 Section 6.1.

The following options set operating system resource limits for the name server process. Some operating systems don't support some or any of the limits. On such systems, a warning will be issued if the unsupported limit is used.

6.2.14.8. Server Resource Limits

The following options set limits on the server's resource consumption that are enforced internally by the server rather than the operating system.

6.2.14.9. Periodic Task Intervals

6.2.14.10. 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; };

6.2.14.11. The sortlist Statement

The response to a DNS query may consist of multiple resource records (RRs) forming a resource records set (RRset). The name server will normally return the RRs within the RRset in an indeterminate order (but see the rrset-order statement in Section 6.2.14.12). 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 (Section 6.2.14.10). 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 4.9.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; };
};

6.2.14.12. 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. The rrset-order statement permits configuration of the ordering of the records in a multiple record response. See also the sortlist statement, Section 6.2.14.11.

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:

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.

6.2.14.13. Synthetic IPv6 responses

Many existing stub resolvers support IPv6 DNS lookups as defined in RFC1886, using AAAA records for forward lookups and "nibble labels" in the ip6.int domain for reverse lookups, but do not support RFC2874-style lookups (using A6 records and binary labels in the ip6.arpa domain).

For those who wish to continue to use such stub resolvers rather than switching to the BIND 9 lightweight resolver, BIND 9 provides a way to automatically convert RFC1886-style lookups into RFC2874-style lookups and return the results as "synthetic" AAAA and PTR records.

This feature is disabled by default and can be enabled on a per-client basis by adding a allow-v6-synthesis { address_match_list }; clause to the options or view statement. When it is enabled, recursive AAAA queries cause the server to first try an A6 lookup and if that fails, an AAAA lookups. No matter which one succeeds, the results are returned as a set of synthetic AAAA records. Similarly, recursive PTR queries in ip6.int will cause a lookup in ip6.arpa using binary labels, and if that fails, another lookup in ip6.int. The results are returned as a synthetic PTR record in ip6.int.

The synthetic records have a TTL of zero. DNSSEC validation of synthetic responses is not currently supported; therefore responses containing synthetic RRs will not have the AD flag set.

6.2.14.14. Tuning

6.2.14.15. The Statistics File

The statistics file generated by BIND 9 is similar, but not identical, to that generated by BIND 8.

The statistics dump begins with the line +++ Statistics Dump +++ (973798949), where the number in parentheses is a standard Unix-style timestamp, measured as seconds since January 1, 1970. Following that line are a series of lines containing a counter type, the value of the counter, optionally a zone name, and optionally a view name. The lines without view and zone listed are global statistics for the entire server. Lines with a zone and view name for the given view and zone (the view name is omitted for the default view). The statistics dump ends with the line --- Statistics Dump --- (973798949), where the number is identical to the number in the beginning line.

The following statistics counters are maintained:

6.2.22.1. Zone Types

6.2.22.2. 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.

6.2.22.3. Zone Options

6.2.22.4. 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 message 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

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).

6.3.1.1. 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 Section 6.2.14.11 and Section 6.2.14.12.

The components of a Resource Record are:

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):

The following classes of resource records are currently valid in the DNS:

RDATA is the type-dependent or class-dependent data that describes the resource:

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:

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:

This example shows two addresses for XX.LCS.MIT.EDU, each of a different class.

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.

The origin and the current domain name revert to the values they had 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.