Installation guide

Chapter 16. Berkeley Internet Name Domain (BIND) 241
16.3.1.2. /etc/rndc.conf
You need to add the following lines to /etc/rndc.conf if rndc is to automatically use the keys
specified in /etc/named.conf. This is done with an options statement:
options {
default-server localhost;
default-key "
key-name ";
};
This command sets a global default key, but the rndc command can also use different keys for partic-
ular servers, as in the following example:
server localhost {
key " key-name ";
};
However, this server statement is only really helpful if you connect to multiple servers with rndc.
The key is the most important statement in /etc/rndc.conf.
key " key-name " {
algorithm hmac-md5;
secret " key-value ";
};
The key-name and key-value should be exactly the same as their settings in
/etc/named.conf.
To test all of the settings, try the rndc reload command. You should see response similar to this:
rndc: reload command successful
If the command was not successful, carefully look over the /etc/named.conf and
/etc/rndc.conf files and look for errors.
16.3.2. rndc Command Line Options
An rndc command takes the following form:
rndc options command command-options
The options area is not required, and you do not have to use command-options unless
the command requires them.
When executing rndc on a properly configured localhost, the following commands are available:
• halt — Stops the named service immediately.
• querylog — Turns on logging of all queries made by clients to this nameserver.
• refresh — Refreshes the nameserver’s database.
• reload — Tells the nameserver to reload the zone files but keep all other previously cached re-
sponses. This allows you to make changes to zone files and have them take effect on your master
and slave servers without losing all stored name resolutions.
If your changes only affected a particular zone, you can tell named to only reload that one zone.
Type the name of the zone after the reload command.