Debugging bind zones and config files

While maintaining zones and config files by hand sometimes you can make typo. Nothing to worry. Let us start with basics:

named-checkconf /etc/bind/named.conf
named-checkzone domain /var/cache/bind/domain.zone.file
tail –f /var/log/message

First command check named.conf (if you use that one) for errors. Second check if everything is ok with given zone files for given domain. Third and last one show what bind output to log file that he didn’t like.

Common mistake is to update zones files manually while using signed dns. But there is an easy fix for that.