Bind9 cannot start, rndc connect failed

Question

I installed virtualmin and played around with the DNS settings. Now when I try to start bind9 I get the error:

Service bind9 restart

 * Stopping domain name service... bind9   
   rndc: connect failed: 127.0.0.1#953: connection refused
                                                                    [ OK ]
 * Starting domain name service... bind9                            [fail]

/var/log/syslog

Oct 11 06:05:45 stock named[6316]: starting BIND 9.8.1-P1 -u bind
Oct 11 06:05:45 stock named[6316]: built with '--prefix=/usr' '--mandir=/usr/share/man' '--infodir=/usr/share/info' '--sysconfdir=/etc/bind' '--localstatedir=/var' '--enable-threads' '--enable-largefile' '--with-libtool' '--enable-shared' '--enable-static' '--with-openssl=/usr' '--with-gssapi=/usr' '--with-gnu-ld' '--with-geoip=/usr' '--enable-ipv6' 'CFLAGS=-fno-strict-aliasing -DDIG_SIGCHASE -O2' 'LDFLAGS=-Wl,-Bsymbolic-functions -Wl,-z,relro' 'CPPFLAGS=-D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2'
Oct 11 06:05:45 stock named[6316]: adjusted limit on open files from 4096 to 1048576
Oct 11 06:05:45 stock named[6316]: found 4 CPUs, using 4 worker threads
Oct 11 06:05:45 stock named[6316]: using up to 4096 sockets
Oct 11 06:05:45 stock named[6316]: loading configuration from '/etc/bind/named.conf'
Oct 11 06:05:45 stock named[6316]: /etc/bind/named.conf.options:26: expected IPv4 address or '*' near ';'
Oct 11 06:05:45 stock named[6316]: loading configuration: unexpected token
Oct 11 06:05:45 stock named[6316]: exiting (due to fatal error)

/etc/bind/named.conf.options

options {
    directory "/var/cache/bind";

    // If there is a firewall between you and nameservers you want
    // to talk to, you may need to fix the firewall to allow multiple
    // ports to talk.  See http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/800113

    // If your ISP provided one or more IP addresses for stable 
    // nameservers, you probably want to use them as forwarders.  
    // Uncomment the following block, and insert the addresses replacing 
    // the all-0's placeholder.

    // forwarders {
    //  0.0.0.0;
    // };

    //========================================================================
    // If BIND logs error messages about the root key being expired,
    // you will need to update your keys.  See https://www.isc.org/bind-keys
    //========================================================================
    dnssec-validation auto;

    auth-nxdomain no;    # conform to RFC1035
    listen-on-v6 { any; };
//  allow-recursion { 127.0.0.1; };
    transfer-source;
};

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 11 '12 at 12:02

The error message is actually pretty self-explanatory. As documented in named.conf(4) the option transfer-source MUST be followed by either an IPv4 address or the token *, while you have just the bare keyword in line 26 of your configuration:

transfer-source;

Fix that and the error will go away.

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited Oct 11 '12 at 11:51

0

You have problem in configuration in named.conf:

Oct 11 06:05:45 stock named[6316]: /etc/bind/named.conf.options:26: expected IPv4 address or '*' near ';'
Oct 11 06:05:45 stock named[6316]: loading configuration: unexpected token

If you edit named.conf on Windows you must convert named.conf to Unix format. You can use dos2unix from Linux.

edited Oct 11 '12 at 11:51

Ansgar Wiechers

4,247
2
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answered Oct 11 '12 at 10:17

tasmanian_devil

204
3
9

Another option would be `recode ibmpc..latin1 named.conf`. That's not the reason for the error, though. – Ansgar Wiechers Oct 11 '12 at 11:57

Bind9 cannot start, rndc connect failed

2 Answers2