BIND as a Nameserver

BIND performs name resolution services through the /usr/sbin/named daemon. BIND also includes an administration utility called /usr/sbin/rndc. More information about rndc can be found in "Using rndc ".

BIND stores its configuration files in the following locations:

/var/named/ directory

The named working directory which stores zone, statistic, and cache files

If you have installed the bind-chroot package, the BIND service will run in the /var/named/chroot environment. All configuration files will be moved there. As such, named.conf will be located in /var/named/chroot/etc/named.conf, and so on.

If you have installed the caching-nameserver package, the default configuration file is /etc/named.caching-nameserver.conf. To override this default configuration, you can create your own custom configuration file in /etc/named.conf. BIND will use the /etc/named.conf custom file instead of the default configuration file after you restart.

The next few sections review the BIND configuration files in more detail.