What is affect of no Named - no site mail/registered domains

[RationalPolymer]

In an environment where there is no webmail enabled for hosted sites and no sites have registered names (eg; they all belong in "our name space"), what is the affect of NAMED not running?

One affect that I have seen is with Site Scheduled Tasks that need URL resolutions. This appears to fail if Named is not running. All OTHER site content seems to work just fine. Apparently even in WordPress Multi-user/site situations.

I FULLY understand bind/named (and /etc/hosts, /etc/resolv.conf, /etc/nsswitch.conf), but it seems that it some cases, virtual hosted sites do not need Named (active) to function. This is NOT a case of incorrect DNS definitions created by Plesk for any hosted site.

SO - what is the "affect" of Named NOT running in a PLesk-12 Linux environment - not only for hosted sites but also the Plesk server itself?

 

[abdi]

If your plesk server is NOT your DNS server, meaning DNS resolutions are take care of a different server than the one hosting your sites, then surely don't need named / bind to be running.

 

[IgorG]

Well. There is difference between "disabled bind" and "not installed bind". If you have installed bind, something will want to use it. If bind is not installed, the system will use the internal resolver resolv.conf for their needs.
Therefore as possible variant you may try to uninstall bind with help of autoinstaller.

 

[RationalPolymer]

Thanks for the comments. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of mentioning "also the Plesk server itself". I wasn't worried, or interested, in the "Plesk server" acting as an institutional DNS server. It (the "Plesk server") is just one of many "servers" within our enterprise. No - we don't intend, need, or want to uninstall Named on a Plesk server.

In answer to my own question, I have found a second reason for maintaining DNS on a Plesk server.

1) if named is not running AND the hosted site does not have a "<hosted site>/etc/resolv.conf" file then the cron job will most likely fail due to not being able to resolve a URL if curl is used to "run the cron job"

2) if named is not running and the hosted site DOES have its own copy of the system "resolv.conf",

a) then the curl-based cron job can run BUT whatever URL in the cron job (internally as well as externally) that used the hosted site name will fail if there is no enterprise DNS entry for that hosted site

b) if the hosted site HAS its own "resolv.conf" with named not running AND there IS an enterprise/global DNS definition for the same site name that does NOT reflect back to the originating Plesk hosted site - THEN the cron job will attempt to access whatever remote site any URL resolved to; in the case where two instances of the same "site" exist on different Plesk servers (one "production" and one "test" where the cron job is being run from), then whatever the "test" cron script tried to do using the "site name" would be directed to the "production" instance of the site - not a good thing.

With Named on the Plesk server running, then any URL naming the hosted site invoked from a site ON that same Plesk server should point back TO the same Plesk server since Plesk will have a DNS entry for that site which points to the same Plesk server.

SO - while some hosted site situations may never need the Plesk named on the server that that site is installed on (depending on URLs used), it is generally a "best practices" to HAVE Named running on the Plesk server.