How to check named.conf

If you want to test a name server's configuration before putting it into production, use the named-checkconf and named-checkzone programs to check the named.conf file and zone data files, respectively. named-checkconf reads /etc/named.conf by default, so if you haven't moved the configuration file into /etc yet, specify the pathname to the configuration file you want to test as the argument:

$ named-checkconf ~/test/named.conf

 

named-checkconf uses the routines in BIND (BIND 9.1.0 and later, to be exact) to make sure the named.conf file is syntactically correct. If there are any syntactic or semantic errors in named.conf, named-checkconf will print an error. For example:

$ named-checkconf /tmp/named.conf
 
/tmp/named.conf:3: missing ';' before '}'

named-checkzone uses BIND's own routines to check the syntax of a zone data file. To run it, specify the domain name of the zone and the name of the zone data file as arguments:

$ named-checkzone hosangit.example db.hosangit.example

 

If the zone contains any errors, named-checkzone prints an error. If the zone would load without errors, named-checkzone prints a message like this:

zone hosangit.example/IN: loaded serial 2002022400
 
OK

Once you've checked the configuration file and zone data, configure the name server to listen on a nonstandard port with the listen-on options substatement, and not to use a control channel:

controls { };
 
 
 
options {
 
    directory "/var/named";
 
    listen-on port 1053 { any; };
 
};

 

That way, the test name server won't interfere with any production name server you might already have running. Check the name server's syslog output (which should be clean, if you ran named-checkconf and named-checkzone) and query the name server with dig or another query tool, specifying the alternate port:

$ dig -p 1053 soa hosangit.example.

 

Once you're satisfied with the name server's responses to a few queries, you can remove the listen-on sub-statement, add a real controls statement and put it into production.