---

bind-8.1.2: description + notes

---

This is the source portion of BIND version 8.1.2. Its companions are "doc" and "contrib" so you are probably not missing anything.

See the CHANGES file for a detailed listing of all changes. See the INSTALL file for information on building and installing BIND 8.1.2.

BIND 8.1.2 Highlights

Security fixes for a number of problems including:

• An attacker could overwrite the stack if inverse query support was enabled.
• A number of denial of service attacks where malformed packets could cause the server to crash.
• The server was willing to answer queries on its forwarding sockets.
• Several memory leaks have been plugged.
• The server no longer panics if a periodic interface scan fails due to no file descriptors being available.
• Updates to a number of ports. New ports for QNX, LynxOS, HP-UX 9.x, and HP MPE.
• "files unlimited" now works as expected on systems where setting an infinite rlim_max for RLIMIT_NOFILE works.
• Adding and deleting the same record in the same dynamic update no longer crashes the server.
• If a dynamic update fails, rollback is now done in LIFO order instead of FIFO order.
• Better behavior when priming of the root servers fails.
• purge_zone() didn't work correctly for the root zone, allowing old data to persist after loading the zone.
• Improved handling of oversized UDP packets.
• All hosts on the also-notify list are now notified.
• The meaning of the count returned by select() varies somewhat by operating system, and this could cause previous releases of the server to spin.
• Per-host statistics may be disabled by specifying 'host-statistics no' in named.conf.
• The maximum number of zones has been increased from 32768 to 65536.
• query-source may specify an address and port that the server is already listening on. BIND 8.1.1 required that either the address or port be wild. E.G., you can now say:

  listen-on port 53 { 10.0.0.1; };
  query-source address 10.0.0.1 port 53;
  

• The value of FD_SETSIZE to use may be specified.
• Experimental -u (set user id), -g (set group id), and -t (chroot) command line options. See the INSTALL file for details.

BIND 8 Features

• DNS Dynamic Updates (RFC 2136)
• DNS Change Notification (RFC 1996)
• Completely new configuration syntax
• Flexible, categorized logging system
• IP-address-based access control for queries, zone transfers, and updates that may be specified on a zone-by-zone basis
• More efficient zone transfers
• Improved performance for servers with thousands of zones
• The server no longer forks for outbound zone transfers
• Many bug fixes

File and Directory Overview

        CHANGES                         history of added features and
                                        fixed bugs

        INSTALL                         how to build and install

        README                          this file
                                                
        TODO                            features planned but not yet written

        Version                         the version number of this release

        bin/*                           source for executables, including
                                        the nameserver

        include/*                       public .h files

        lib/*                           the resolver and various BIND
                                        support libraries

        port/*                          ports to various operating systems

Kits, Questions, Comments, and Bug Reports

    ftp://ftp.isc.org/isc/bind/src/cur        current non-test release
    ftp://ftp.isc.org/isc/bind/src/testing    latest public test kit

    usenet:comp.protocols.dns.bind            using BIND
    usenet:comp.protocols.dns.ops             DNS operations in general
    usenet:comp.protocols.dns.std             DNS standards in general

    mailto:bind-users-request@vix.com         gw'd to u:c.p.d.bind
    mailto:namedroppers-request@internic.net  gw'd to u:c.p.d.std
    mailto:bind-workers-request@vix.com       code warriors only please

    http://www.isc.org/bind.html              the BIND home page
    mailto:bind-bugs@isc.org                  bug reports

To Support the Effort

Note that BIND is supported by the Internet Software Consortium, and although it is free for use and redistribution and incorporation into vendor products and export and anything else you can think of, it costs money to produce. That money comes from ISPs, hardware and software vendors, companies who make extensive use of the software, and generally kind hearted folk such as yourself.

The Internet Software Consortium has also commissioned a DHCP server implementation, has taken over official support/release of the INN system, and supports the Kerberos Version 5 effort at MIT. You can learn more about the ISC's goals and accomplishments from the web page at http://www.isc.org/.

---

To auto-install this package, go back and click on the respective install icon.

---