DNS issue on VPS

[AntonK]

Hi there

I have a VPS which uses plesk version 9.3.The weird thing is that dns stops sometime.So i had to restart the service in order to fix it temporarily.Then it will work without any issue.I have searched it eventvwr and found the following errors related to named service

1) zone 0.0.127.in-addr.arpa/IN: NS '0.0.127.in-addr.arpa' has no address records.

2) the 'files' limit (2048) is less than FD_SETSIZE (16384), increase 'files' in named.conf or recompile with a smaller FD_SETSIZE.

But there is no option to set in named.conf.So I'm screwed up .....It is hectic to find out the root cause.
Any one has suggestion on this ?

system :windows 2008 + plesk v 9.3

Anton

 

[pslva38]

I have the very same problem - I'm running Windows Server 2008, IIS7, Plesk 9.2.1, Bind 9.4.2.

Bind keeps crashing - sometimes as regularly as once per hour (or so), across 3 servers I run (same setup as above for each server). I had to implement a scheduled script to force-restart bind every hour just to minimise downtime (I know it's a clunky solution, I'm working on something that checks for a website's availability, if offline, then restart DNS - script to run once per minute or so).

The basic batch file to restart Bind :-

-------------
cd..
cd..
cd plesk
cd dns
cd bin
net stop "Plesk Name Server"
taskkill /f /im named.exe /t
named.exe -f
-------------

....save the above as a .bat file, then run it via a scheduled script. It's better to call this script based on unavailability of a domain name that's hosted on the server where Bind crashes. Forgive my basic knowledge of DOS commands here and the first 5 lines of the bat file - but basically you need to make sure the following run successfully:-

net stop "Plesk Name Server"
taskkill /f /im named.exe /t
named.exe -f

...also make sure the scheduled script kills the previous scheduled task of this, before starting a new instance of the scheduled task.

Now because "named.exe -f" just runs and runs, you have to run a SEPARATE .bat file with the following line:-

net start "Plesk Name Server"

...as it will not run if you simply place that line in the same .bat file straight after the "named.exe -f" line (as this command just runs and runs and you never get to the next line of the .bat file to execute).

Make sure the 2nd .bat file runs just a few seconds after the 1st .bat file - it ensures the Plesk Name Server service restarts after you kill and relaunch the named.exe process.

Yes, I realise what a rigmarole all this is, and likely my solution would be regarded as rather crude, but once you complete the above steps and set a regular schedule, you can avoid DNS failures with Bind 9.4.2. Downtime is not an option.

I have a question though - how easy is it to upgrade Bind via Plesk? I hear that the versions of Bind we are running have these issues, but an upgrade should solve it. Can the upgrade be performed in the Plesk control panel?

 

[MaxemilianH]

Same problem

Sounds like a real problem

I also get the message client 85.25.128.11#44006: query (cache) 'www.domain.name/A/IN' denied

A reboot does not help, but after creating and deleting a host entry for the given zone it works again. This might be a problem of the config file itself, it might have been altered by any task running periodically.

My machine also had problems with MySQL, where passwords have been reset/misconfigured periodically. I had to change the password back to the required value once a month or so... before I switched to mssql server

Please let me know if you have a solution for the DNS issue. This drives me nuts,

Max

 

[MaxemilianH]

Oh... i forgot: my version is 8.6, running on Windows 2008 x64

 

[pslva38]

Cheers for your reply. I've also tried to upgrade BIND from 9.4.2 to 9.7.1 with no success. I follow the steps here:-

http://kb.odin.com/5542

I tried these exact steps in the link above, but I get the following error when I attempt step 9 (Start BIND service Plesk Name Server service):-

————
System error 14001 has occurred.

The application has failed to start because its side-by-side configuration is incorrect. Please see the application event log for more detail.
————

...and so I'm prevented from upgrading away from 9.4.2 (which has been proven to have known issues looking at various forums across the internet).

I have made sure I have Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable Package installed equaled or higher than the package shipped with the BIND distributive (the "vcredist_x86.exe" file in the archive) yet still receive the above error.

I've been able to mitigate the terrible issue of DNS failing regularly with these scheduled restarts of BIND so I've not had any noticeable/reported downtime since the above (rudimentary) fix.

It's all a bit of a mess - I wish BIND was either easy to upgrade or simply worked as intended. My data centre were of no help (whose dedicated servers ship with Plesk 9.2.1 and Bind 9.4.2 to this day). They say "upgrade manually" but I can't because of the above errors.

I've had these issues on a fresh server with Plesk/Bind - added no more than a few domains before I got this issue so I know it's not me misconfiguring something, plus I've been running dedicated servers for over 5 years with Microsoft DNS with nary a problem.

 

[MaxemilianH]

I found out that the zone files are missing in C:\Program Files (x86)\Parallels\Plesk\dns\var
When I do the procedure described above (create host entry), plesk writes these files to disk. I tried to reverse engineer to find out the location where plesk saves this data to automate this task, but the plesk scripts are encrypted. It's no fun to recreate the dns zones for 30 domains every month (or week).

 

[pslva38]

"My machine also had problems with MySQL, where passwords have been reset/misconfigured periodically"

MaxemilianH, I guess you've already looked in scheduled tasks - sounds like some scheduled task doing something odd - certainly look in Event Viewer to see if there's any clues there. Very strange issue you have there.

 

[pslva38]

"I tried to reverse engineer to find out the location where plesk saves this data to automate this task, but the plesk scripts are encrypted."

Ah - so because they're encrypted you need to manually add them again via Plesk Control Panel? Have you tried using Plesk's backup system to recreate these via backup? I set a daily backup of all the Plesk settings.

On a DNS related note, what are your SOA (State of Authority) settings? I've toyed with the idea of setting the refresh level from 3 hours to something longer like a day - my domains aren't subject to regular DNS changes and I think the longer refresh rate (with a short retry rate of say 15 mins) should limit DNS failures somewhat (in theory anyway) as there's less zone transfers taking place (in case a failure happens between my hourly named.exe restarts) - just my theory though.