UPDATES BROKE BIND SERVER

We can help, but we'll need a little more information than that :-)

What's the problem exactly? What are the symptoms of the problem -- what errors are you seeing?

Was there any output during the BIND update? Are any messages in /var/log/syslog?

Also, is BIND actually not running, or does Virtualmin just say BIND isn't running? Someone else recently reported an issue where they updated BIND, and apparently, due to a new PID file location, Virtualmin got confused and thought it wasn't actually running when it was.

This apparently was a change by Debian developers. Take a look at: http://www.virtualmin.com/node/14569

and

http://www.virtualmin.com/node/14575

A work around is in place and plans to fix it in a future update.

The quick fix is to go to Webmin -> Servers -> BIND DNS Server -> Module Config -> System configuration, and change the "Default PID file location(s)" to /var/run/bind/run/named/named.pid

Are you able to get to Webmin -> Servers -> BIND DNS Server -> Module Config?

On that screen is a dropdown list at the top. By default, it's set to "BIND Paths".

If you click the dropdown list, the last item in it should be "System Configuration".

Once in the System Configuration screen, you can then set "Default PID file location(s)" to "/var/run/bind/run/named/named.pid".

None of the above are working for me and Bind is still down, I get this error after changing the default pid location:

Jun 8 17:34:05 server1 named[19336]: none:0: open: /etc/bind/rndc.key: permission denied Jun 8 17:34:05 server1 named[19336]: couldn't add command channel 127.0.0.1#953: permission denied Jun 8 17:34:05 server1 named[19336]: none:0: open: /etc/bind/rndc.key: permission denied Jun 8 17:34:05 server1 named[19336]: couldn't add command channel ::1#953: permission denied Jun 8 17:34:05 server1 named[19336]: couldn't open pid file '/var/run/bind/run/named/named.pid': Permission denied Jun 8 17:34:05 server1 named[19336]: exiting (due to early fatal error)

Yeah, all the above does is tell Virtualmin where to look when BIND creates the PID file.

The problem you're seeing now is that BIND isn't able to create the PID file; which appears to be an entirely separate issue (though perhaps still one related to the Debian update to BIND, I'm not certain).

What I would do is verify that the user BIND is running as (which I think is "bind" on Debian systems) has write permissions to the files/directories mentioned above (in particular, "/var/run/bind/run/named" and "/etc/bind/rndc.key").

Hi Eric,

Well, I assume it's related to the Bind update as this box is a year-old bog-standard Virtualmin Pro install and has never had permissions problems with anything before.

Can you give step-by-step instructions? I prefer to use yours than mine - less is likely to get broken. ;)

Thanks,

R.

Well, I suppose the place to start is to determine what the current permissions are. What do you get when typing these two commands:

First one gives:

drwxr-xr-x 2 bind bind 4096 Jun 8 17:21 /var/run/bind/run/named

Second one gives:

-rw-r----- 1 bind bind 77 Apr 24 2009 /etc/bind/rndc.key

Hrm, the above appears to be correct... after seeing that, I'm not sure why you're getting permission errors.

Do you get any output on the command line when typing this command:

Also, what do you get when typing the following:

Hmm, well just the restart worked from the command line, which is great as now Bind is up and running just fine it seems (thanks!), though it's a bit strange that restarting it via Virtualmin fails.

Still, it's running and that's the main thing for now.

Thanks a bunch Eric, you saved the day (yet again).

I really appreciate it. :)

R.

Automatically closed -- issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.