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RNDC is a useful mechanism for administering DNS servers. If it is not configured, BIND complains about it.

Determine the locations where RNDC expects to find the config files.

Create the rndc config file:

Thy rndc conf file should also have the contents that need to go to "/etc/named.conf". See sample below:

Once the key and control section has been added to named.conf, restart named and test again with:

This is useful when migrating servers and you want to reduce the DNS time to live for all domains.

Change the TTL on all domains to 5 mins (300 seconds) in the psa database.

Then update the zone files via:

Verify with:

Notes on setting up a dynamic dns for home with bind-9.x

1. Generating Secure DNS Keys

On the home/client machine:

# mkdir /etc/bind/tsig
# cd /etc/bind/tsig
# dnssec-keygen -a HMAC-MD5 -b 128 -n HOST host.domain.tld.

Note the "." after the tld. This generates the public and the private keys.




2. named.conf

On the remote server:

Edit "/etc/named.conf" and add the generated key to the conf. (Note the trailing dot):

key host.domain.tld. {
        algorithm hmac-md5;
        secret "qUSfVtkYf7WLxiZaOTN3Ua==";
};




3. Grant Authority

Still on the remote server:

Edit the "/etc/bind/zone.domain.tld" file, and modify the current allow-update line to include the key.

allow-update   { key "default_key."; key "host.domain.tld."; };

This allows full authority to modify any record within the domain (Be Warned).

Restart named and make sure nothing is broken.




4. nsupdate

Back to the client machine:

Run nsupdate to test that the client can now make updates.

# nsupdate -k /etc/bind/tsig/Khost.domain.tld.*.key
> update delete host.domain.tld A
> update add host.domain.tld. 600 A 1.2.3.4
> send
> quit

It first deletes host.domain.tld if it already exists, then recreates it with the given TTL, type, and IP address. The TTL is the time-to-live, which is a value used by other DNS servers to determine how often they refresh the entry for this host. A smaller values means they'll refresh more often, which is what you want for a dynamic entry. "send" tells nsupdate to send the updates to the server.




5. Automate

Create a script and put it in a 10 minute cron to check for changes in the wan ip address and run nsupdate automagically.

# cat /etc/cron.d/ddns
SHELL=/bin/sh
*/10 * * * * root /etc/bind/ddns

Below is an example script that gets the info from a Belkin wireless router within the home lan.

#!/bin/bash
# ddns

HOSTNAME="host.domain.tld"
KEYFILE="/etc/bind/tsig/Khost.domain.tld.*.key"
TTL=600
#LOG="/tmp/ddns_log"
LOG="/dev/null"
IP_FILE="/tmp/ddns_ip"

NEW_IP=`wget -q -O - 192.168.2.1 | grep "Up.*dw" | tr "\n" " " | awk -F "'" '{print $12}'`

function do_nsupdate {
        echo "New IP address (${NEW_IP}) found. Updating..." >> $LOG
        echo $NEW_IP > $IP_FILE
        nsupdate -k $KEYFILE >> $LOG << EOF
        update delete $HOSTNAME A
        update add $HOSTNAME $TTL A $NEW_IP
        send
        quit
EOF
}

if [ ! -f $IP_FILE ]; then
        echo "Creating $IP_FILE..." >> $LOG
        do_nsupdate
else
        OLD_IP=`cat $IP_FILE`
        if [ "$NEW_IP" = "$OLD_IP" ]; then
                echo "new and old IPs (${OLD_IP}) are same. Exiting..." >> $LOG
                exit 0
        else
                do_nsupdate
        fi
fi

exit 0