BIND

BIND, or the Berkeley Internet Name Daemon, is a popular free software DNS server, and also one of the most frequently used name servers on the Internet.

With BIND, users are able to set up a name server for managing their own DNS records, for caching DNS or acting as a slave DNS server. The software supports DNSSEC (which provides cryptographic signatures on the DNS records as a means to authenticate the integrity and ownership of the records) natively.

Installing BIND
BIND is offered through the package. Please check the USE flags before installing (you can use equery u bind for an overview of available USE flags and their meaning). As BIND is a popular name server software, it is also a popular target for hackers and malicious groups, so it is wise to securely configure BIND - which includes building in support for only those features you are planning to use.

If you are planning on using BIND in a chrooted environment, edit and set the CHROOT variable accordingly. Check the comments as well, as they provide information on automatically creating the chrooted environment using emerge --config.

Managing BIND
Most management of BIND is done through its rndc command, although you can use the init script as well. Next to the default start/stop/restart routines, it also offers the following functionality:


 * checkconfig validates the configuration file ( for correct syntax
 * checkzones validates the zone files for correct syntax
 * reload reloads the zone files without restarting the named daemon itself