Slave DNS Server

[Paul Howarth]

Dan Righter wrote:
> This is probably basic, but can you clue me in on what the rndc key is for
> and how to check if it is working?

rndc is a tool for runtime control of the nameserver. /etc/rndc.key is the 
file containing a security key to ensure that only the right people can use 
it. The bind rpm post-install script should create this file for you, and your 
main named.conf file should include it like this:

include "/etc/rndc.key";

It is, however, nothing to do with slave servers.

The tool you need to diagnose this problem is "dig", which is part of the 
"bind-utils" package.

On your slave server, run "dig @master-server-ip example.com axfr"

This should output a list of the zone example.com. If it doesn't, the reason 
is that the master is not configured to allow transfers to the slave.

If you get a connection failure then you may have firewall problems.

If the transfer works, the problem lies with the slave server configuration.

That should narrow the problem down a bit.

Paul.