13.2 Turning On Debugging

Name server debugging can be started either from the command line or with control messages. If you need to see the startup information to diagnose your current problem, you'll have to use the command-line option. If you want to start debugging on a name server that is already running or if you want to turn off debugging, you'll have to use controls. The name server writes its debugging output to named.run. BIND 4 name servers create named.run in /usr/tmp (or /var/tmp), and BIND 8 and 9 name servers create it in the name server's working directory.

13.2.1 Debugging Command-Line Option

When troubleshooting, you sometimes need to see the sortlist, know which interface a file descriptor is bound to, or find out where in the initialization stage the name server was when it exited (if the syslog error message wasn't clear enough). To see this kind of debugging information, you'll have to start debugging with a command-line option; by the time you send a control message, it will be too late. The command-line option for debugging is -d level. When you use the command-line option to turn on debugging, a BIND 4 name server will not go into the background as it does normally; you'll have to add the & at the end of your command line to get your shell prompt back. Here's how to start a BIND 4 name server at debugging level 1:

# /etc/named -d 1 &

BIND 8 and 9 name servers go into the background even when you specify -d, so there's no need for the &.

13.2.2 Changing the Debugging Level with Control Messages

If you don't need to see the name server's initialization, start your name server without the debugging command-line option. You can later turn debugging on and off by using ndc to send the appropriate control message to the name server process. Here, we set debugging to level 3, then turn debugging off:

# ndc trace 3
# ndc notrace

And, as you might expect, if you turn on debugging from the command line, you can still use ndc to change the name server's debug level.

BIND 9.1.0's rndc doesn't implement the trace or notrace arguments yet (nor does the 9.1.0 named ), but a future version will. So if you're running BIND 9, use the -d command-line option.