bind9-9.1.1: description + notes

ISC BIND 9.1.1

BIND version 9 is a major rewrite of nearly all aspects of the underlying BIND architecture. Some of the important features of BIND 9 are:

BIND version 9 development has been underwritten by the following organizations:

Current Release: BIND9.1.1 - PGP Signature

BIND 9.1.1 is a maintenance release, containing fixes for a number of bugs in BIND 9.1.0 but no new features.

Features introduced in 9.1.0 included:

BIND 9.1 also includes experimental implementations of a number of DNS protocols extensions still under development in the IETF. These include transparent processing of unknown RR types and use of the EDNS "DNSSEC OK" bit to explicitly enable DNSSEC processing in responses.

Cryptographic operations are now based on the OpenSSL library instead of DNSsafe.

BIND 9.1 is primarily a name server software distribution. In addition to the name server, it also includes a new lightweight stub resolver library and associated resolver daemon that fully support forward and reverse lookups of both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. This library is still considered experimental and is not a complete replacement for the BIND 8 resolver library. Applications that use the BIND 8 res_* functions to perform DNS lookups or dynamic updates still need to be linked against the BIND 8 libraries. For DNS lookups, they can also use the new "getrrsetbyname()" API.

BIND 9.1 is capable of acting as an authoritative server for DNSSEC secured zones. This functionality is believed to be stable and complete except for lacking support for wildcard records in secure zones.

When acting as a caching server, BIND 9.1 can be configured to perform DNSSEC secure resolution on behalf of its clients. This part of the DNSSEC implementation is still considered experimental. For detailed information about the state of the DNSSEC implementation, see the file doc/misc/dnssec.

There are a few known bugs:

For a detailed list of user-visible changes from previous releases, see the CHANGES file.

Building

BIND 9 currently requires a UNIX system with an ANSI C compiler, basic POSIX support, and a 64 bit integer type.

We've had successful builds and tests on the following systems:

Additionally, we have unverified reports of success from users of the following systems:

To build, just

./configure
make

Several environment variables that can be set before running configure will affect compilation:

CC
The C compiler to use. configure tries to figure out the right one for supported systems.

CFLAGS
C compiler flags. Defaults to include -g and/or -O2 as supported by the compiler.

STD_CINCLUDES
System header file directories. Can be used to specify where add-on thread or IPv6 support is, for example. Defaults to empty string.

STD_CDEFINES
Any additional preprocessor symbols you want defined. Defaults to empty string.

To build shared libraries, specify "--with-libtool" on the configure command line.

If your operating system has integrated support for IPv6, it will be used automatically. If you have installed KAME IPv6 separately, use "--with-kame[=PATH]" to specify its location.

To see additional configure options, run "configure --help".

"make install" will install "named" and the various BIND 9 libraries. By default, installation is into /usr/local, but this can be changed with the "--prefix" option when running "configure".

If you're planning on making changes to the BIND 9 source, you should also "make depend". If you're using Emacs, you might find "make tags" helpful.

Building with gcc is not supported, unless gcc is the vendor's usual compiler (e.g. the various BSD systems, Linux).

A limited test suite can be run with "make test". Many of the tests require you to configure a set of virtual IP addresses on your system, and some require Perl; see bin/tests/system/README for details.

Documentation

The BIND 9 Administrator Reference Manual is included with the source distribution in DocBook XML and HTML format, in the doc/arm directory.

Some of the programs in the BIND 9 distribution have man pages under the doc/man directory. In particular, the command line options of "named" are documented in doc/man/bind/named.8. There is now also a set of man pages for the lwres library.

The man pages are currently not installed automatically by "make install".

If you are upgrading from BIND 8, please read the migration notes in doc/misc/migration.

Bug Reports and Mailing Lists

Bug reports should be sent to: bind9-bugs@isc.org
To join the BIND 9 Users mailing list, send mail to: bind9-users-request@isc.org

If you're planning on making changes to the BIND 9 source code, you might want to join the BIND 9 Workers mailing list. Send mail to: bind9-workers-request@isc.org

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