Mr. Szymanski

For those of you running a bind dns server you may have come across this error only when trying to restart your DNS server

This has to do with the configuration of (or lack there of) in /etc/bind/rndc.conf

I noticed while searching the system for references to rndc that there was a program called: /usr/sbin/rndc-confgen
Running this gives you the correct text to put in your rdnc.conf file as well as a couple lines to add to your named.conf

Mine looked something like this…

 /usr/sbin/rndc-confgen
# Start of rndc.conf
key "rndc-key" {
    algorithm hmac-md5;
    secret "imnottelling==";
};

options {
    default-key "rndc-key";
    default-server 127.0.0.1;
    default-port 953;
};
# End of rndc.conf

# Use with the following in named.conf, adjusting the allow list as needed:
# key "rndc-key" {
#     algorithm hmac-md5;
#     secret "imnottelling==";
# };
#
# controls {
#     inet 127.0.0.1 port 953
#         allow { 127.0.0.1; } keys { "rndc-key"; };
# };
# End of named.conf

Note: Remove the # fromt the config lines for the second part that goes into the /etc/bind/named.conf file.

After adding these few lines to names.conf and creating rdnc.conf (make sure the user bind can read this file) I was able to restart/reload the bind9 service without error.

Linux

bind9

debian