Bind will not start after editing /var/named.conf
 

I'm trying to set up BIND for the first time. So far so good. I can ping, do an nslookup, and restart the named service just fine. It all resolves from my machine.

Now it is time to create my zones in /var/named.conf and then create the records.

I want to create a forward lookup and a reverse lookup.

So I open /var/named.conf and added the two zones

But then I can't restart the named service. I do

And the service fails.

smw.local.zone exists and so does smw.local.rr.zone

If I remove the two zones I added to named.conf the service restarts fine.

----

named.conf

• http://pastebin.com/hjwLBdeM

smw.local.zone

• http://pastebin.com/FZBEjkUB

smw.local.rr.zone

• http://pastebin.com/hE0zpmUw

Why might the service not want to start after adding the two zones?

Hi,

You miss the brackets in the SOA records of both zone files. Also you use a CNAME for the MX RR, that is illegal:
BTW you could use named-checkzone to find out the errors

Regards

I made those changes, but it still fails.

Plus you said, "Also you use a CNAME for the MX RR"

So instead of CNAME use MX?

These are the errors

/var/named/smw.local.zone:17: near '192.168.1.2': not a valid number
zone smw.local/IN: loading from master file /var/named/smw.local.zone failed: not a valid number

Maybe it needs a priority number? I'll check and get back.

I'm trying to go back and make things simple. Below is my forward and reverse zone files. The forward file loads, but thereverse doesn't

Forward:
Reverse
The errors I get from the reverse are

/var/named/smw.local.rr.zone:4: ignoring out-of-zone data (1.168.192.addr.arpa)
/var/named/smw.local.rr.zone:12: ignoring out-of-zone data (1.168.192.addr.arpa)
/var/named/smw.local.rr.zone:13: ignoring out-of-zone data (1.1.168.192.addr.arpa)
/var/named/smw.local.rr.zone:14: ignoring out-of-zone data (2.1.168.192.addr.arpa)
zone smw.local/IN: has 0 SOA records
zone smw.local/IN: has no NS records
zone smw.local/IN: not loaded due to errors.

What's getting me is I can go into my named.conf and remove the reverse zone, but named won't even start then..

Oops I forgot to change the CNAME with A:

That is because you use a wrong zone name in $ORIGIN. The correct is 1.168.192.in-addr.arpa and not 1.168.192.addr.arpa.

Now it says

/var/named/smw.local.rr.zone:4: ignoring out-of-zone data (1.168.192.in-addr.arpa)
/var/named/smw.local.rr.zone:12: ignoring out-of-zone data (1.168.192.in-addr.arpa)
/var/named/smw.local.rr.zone:13: ignoring out-of-zone data (1.1.168.192.in-addr.arpa)
/var/named/smw.local.rr.zone:14: ignoring out-of-zone data (2.1.168.192.in-addr.arpa)
zone smw.local/IN: has 0 SOA records
zone smw.local/IN: has no NS records
zone smw.local/IN: not loaded due to errors.


I'll keep researching thanks for the help.

------

I forgot to remove the period after arpa. Here is my reverse record now

This is giving the following errors


/var/named/smw.local.rr.zone:4: SOA record not at top of zone (1.168.192.in-addr.arpa.smw.local)
zone smw.local/IN: loading from master file /var/named/smw.local.rr.zone failed: not at top of zone
zone smw.local/IN: not loaded due to errors.

You miss the trailing dot in the zone name (after the word arpa):

With the trailing dot I get

/var/named/smw.local.rr.zone:4: ignoring out-of-zone data (1.168.192.in-addr.arpa)
/var/named/smw.local.rr.zone:12: ignoring out-of-zone data (1.168.192.in-addr.arpa)
/var/named/smw.local.rr.zone:13: ignoring out-of-zone data (1.1.168.192.in-addr.arpa)
/var/named/smw.local.rr.zone:14: ignoring out-of-zone data (2.1.168.192.in-addr.arpa)
zone smw.local/IN: has 0 SOA records
zone smw.local/IN: has no NS records
zone smw.local/IN: not loaded due to errors.

You have something wrong in your config, as it looks like the reverse zone uses the zonefile of the forward zone.
Double-check your configuration files and post the output of both:

I think it's working. I'm doing all of this for the first time, and at this point I'm a little lost. I got named started. So I did an nslookup for ns1 and it came back

Server: 127.0.0.1
Address: 127.0.0.1#53

Name: ns1.smw.local
Address: 192.168.1.2

Am I right? Have I done it? I got rid of the reverse zone for now from my named.conf. Here is my current zone file.

Yup, it's the correct answer.
You may delete one of the 2 A records for ns1 in the zone file. And don't forget to increase the serial after doing changes to the zonefile

Regards

Thanks for the help! Yo mean get rid of either the www or ns1 record? Why should I change the serial?

And one last question. The reason I am doing this is because I'm going to set up a FreeIPA domain controller and I need a DNS server so my hostnames are resolvable. In order to make hostnames resolvable for all of my machines do I need to add a zone and zone file for each of them?

I mean to remove one of the two:

You need to increase the serial every time you do changes in a zone file, so named gets notified about the changes. You need to reload named too.


If I understand what you're trying to do, I'd say you need to add an entry (an A RR) for each one of your hosts in the same zone file, that is smw.local.zone in your case.

Regards