Bind nameserver very unstable

[BrunoR]

After upgrading from Plesk 9.3 to Plesk 9.5.1, Bind has gone very unstable. It happens sometimes, when a user adds, changes or deletes a domain (and as a result Plesk tells Bind to restart in order to present the new zone) and Bind seems to not be able to restart well, indicating port already in use. It seems like bind is starting even before it has stopped, being unable to use the needed sockets.

Is there any solution for this? Maybe increase the restart delay of this service?

Event log:

could not listen on UDP socket: address in use

creating IPv4 interface TCP/IP Interface 1 failed; interface ignored

(to all IP Addresses)

Thank You

 

[IgorG]

Make sure that you have not enabled MSDNS and BIND. Plesk is shipped with BIND DNS server. I would suggest to switch your DNS Server to BIND in Server > Components Management > DNS Server and monitor server status after that. Switching from MSDNS to BIND server is supposed to put all the DNS zone records to named.conf (basic configuration file of BIND stored in %plesk_dir%\dns\etc) automatically. However, if this is not going to happen you may force it then:

cd %plesk_bin%
dnsmng.exe update *

 

[BrunoR]

Hello IgorG

Thank you for your reply. I have always used BIND, so it was already activated (doubled checked now). That is not the problem.

 

[shall]

I just experienced this same problem this morning. DNS was down for half an hour while I tried to figure out what was wrong. The biggest issue? Plesk reported DNS as "running" even though the service was not actually able to service any requests. If the service doesn't *work* it doesn't matter if the ExE is in memory!

 

[MehmetG]

I agree with BrunoR and shall. After upgrading Plesk 9.5 , DNS problems occured in our two main servers.
Every day my customers calling me and complains DNS resolution problem. I retstart the Plesk DNS Service (BIND), then problem resolves. Next day repeating same problem again and again.

I think sheduling a command that restarts Bind for ex. every hour. Maybe this will be a temporary solution for this huge problem.

 

[VipinV]

If bind is unstable. Try upgrading the bind to a new version manually. Follow the KB:
http://kb.odin.com/en/5542

 

[MehmetG]

I have upgraded the BIND to the latest version (9.7.2). After testing for a while, I will write here the result.

 

[shall]

I upgraded to the current release of Bind the second time my DNS failed, a few days after the comment above. It's been almost two weeks now, and it hasn't had any other issues since. I followed the method at the link above, and created a batch file to help automate upgrades in the future:

@ECHO off
REM Use this to upgrade BIND on Plesk.
REM Download the current version of BIND from:
REM http://www.isc.org/downloads/current
REM Unzip it to the same directory as THIS batch file.
REM Run the batch file.
REM It performs all the necessary steps to upgrade.
REM
REM ### NOTE ### http://kb.odin.com/en/5542
REM If it does stop working, please review permissions
REM in the "%plesk_dir%\dns\bin" folder. They should be
REM inherited with the following settings:
REM psaadm - allow read & execute
REM psaserv - deny all
REM psacln - deny all


mkdir backup

net stop "Plesk Name Server"

robocopy "%plesk_dir%\dns\bin" "backup" /mir

copy /v /y BINDInstall.exe "%plesk_dir%\dns\bin\"
copy /v /y dig.exe "%plesk_dir%\dns\bin\"
copy /v /y dnssec-keygen.exe "%plesk_dir%\dns\bin\"
copy /v /y dnssec-signzone.exe "%plesk_dir%\dns\bin\"
copy /v /y host.exe "%plesk_dir%\dns\bin\"
copy /v /y named.exe "%plesk_dir%\dns\bin\"
copy /v /y named-checkconf.exe "%plesk_dir%\dns\bin\"
copy /v /y named-checkzone.exe "%plesk_dir%\dns\bin\"
copy /v /y named-compilezone.exe "%plesk_dir%\dns\bin\"
copy /v /y nslookup.exe "%plesk_dir%\dns\bin\"
copy /v /y nsupdate.exe "%plesk_dir%\dns\bin\"
copy /v /y rndc-confgen.exe "%plesk_dir%\dns\bin\"
copy /v /y rndc.exe "%plesk_dir%\dns\bin\"
copy /v /y libbind9.dll "%plesk_dir%\dns\bin\"
copy /v /y libeay32.dll "%plesk_dir%\dns\bin\"
copy /v /y bindevt.dll "%plesk_dir%\dns\bin\"
copy /v /y libdns.dll "%plesk_dir%\dns\bin\"
copy /v /y libisccc.dll "%plesk_dir%\dns\bin\"
copy /v /y libisccfg.dll "%plesk_dir%\dns\bin\"
copy /v /y libisc.dll "%plesk_dir%\dns\bin\"
copy /v /y liblwres.dll "%plesk_dir%\dns\bin\"

net start "Plesk Name Server"