bind9/README

BIND 9

	BIND version 9 is a major rewrite of nearly all aspects of the
	underlying BIND architecture. This re-architecting of BIND was
	necessitated by the expected demands of:

		- Domain name system growth, particularly in very large
		  zones such as .COM
		- Protocol enhancements necessary to securely query and
		  update zones
		- Protocol enhancements necessary to take advantage of
		  certain architectural features of IP version 6

	These demands implied performance requirements that were not
	necessarily easy to attain with the BIND version 8
	architecture.  In particular, BIND must not only be able to
	run on multi-processor multi-threaded systems, but must take
	full advantage of the performance enhancements these
	architectures can provide. In addition, the underlying data
	storage architecture of BIND version 8 does not lend itself to
	implementing alternative back end databases, such as would be
	desirable for the support of multi-gigabyte zones. As such
	zones are easily foreseeable in the relatively near future,
	the data storage architecture needed revision. The feature
	requirements for BIND version 9 included:

		- Scalability
			Thread safety
		        Multi-processor scalability
		        Support for very large zones

		- Security
		        Support for DNSSEC
		        Support for TSIG
		        Auditability (code and operation)
		        Firewall support (split DNS)

		- Portability

		- Maintainability

		- Protocol Enhancements
		        IXFR, DDNS, Notify, EDNS0
		        Improved standards conformance

		- Operational enhancements
		        High availability and reliability
		        Support for alternative back end databases

		- IP version 6 support
		        IPv6 resource records (A6, DNAME, etc.)
		        Bitstring labels
		        APIs

	BIND version 9 development has been underwritten by the following
	organizations:

	        Sun Microsystems, Inc.
	        Hewlett Packard
	        Compaq Computer Corporation
	        IBM
	        Process Software Corporation
	        Silicon Graphics, Inc.
	        Network Associates, Inc.
	        U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency
		USENIX Association
		Stichting NLnet - NLnet Foundation


BIND 9.1.0a1

	This is an unreleased alpha version of BIND 9.1.0.

	For a detailed list of user-visible changes from
	previous releases, see the CHANGES file.	


Building

	BIND 9 currently requires a UNIX system with an ANSI C compiler,
	basic POSIX support, and a good pthreads implementation.

	We've had successful builds and tests on the following systems:

		AIX 4.3
		COMPAQ Tru64 UNIX 4.0D
                COMPAQ Tru64 UNIX 5 (with IPv6 EAK)
		FreeBSD 3.4-STABLE
		HP-UX 11
		IRIX64 6.5
		NetBSD-current (with "unproven" pthreads)
		Red Hat Linux 6.0, 6.1, 6.2
		Solaris 2.6, 7, 8 (beta)

	To build, just

		./configure
		make

        Several environment variables that can be set before running
        configure will affect compilation:

            CC
                The C compiler to use.  configure tries to figure
                out the right one for supported systems.

            CFLAGS
                C compiler flags.  Defaults to include -g and/or -O2
                as supported by the compiler.

            STD_CINCLUDES
                System header file directories.  Can be used to specify
                where add-on thread or IPv6 support is, for example.
                Defaults to empty string.

            STD_CDEFINES
                Any additional preprocessor symbols you want defined.
                Defaults to empty string.

        To build shared libraries, specify "--with-libtool" on the
	configure command line.

	If your operating system has integrated support for IPv6, it
	will be used automatically.  If you have installed KAME IPv6
	separately, use "--with-kame[=PATH]" to specify its location.
	
        To see additional configure options, run "configure --help".

	"make install" will install "named" and the various BIND 9 libraries.
	By default, installation is into /usr/local, but this can be changed
	with the "--prefix" option when running "configure".

	If you're planning on making changes to the BIND 9 source, you
	should also "make depend".  If you're using Emacs, you might find
	"make tags" helpful.

	Building with gcc is not supported, unless gcc is the vendor's usual
	compiler (e.g. the various BSD systems, Linux).

	Parts of the library can be tested by running "make test" from the
	bin/tests subdirectory.


Bug Reports and Mailing Lists

	Bugs reports should be sent to

		bind9-bugs@isc.org

	To join the BIND 9 Users mailing list, send mail to

		bind9-users-request@isc.org

	If you're planning on making changes to the BIND 9 source
	code, you might want to join the BIND 9 Workers mailing list.
	Send mail to

		bind9-workers-request@isc.org


"named" command line options

	-c <config_file>

	-d <debug_level>

	-f				Run in the foreground.

	-g				Run in the foreground and log
					to stderr, ignoring any "logging"
					statement in in the config file.

	-n <number_of_cpus>		

	-t <directory>			Chroot to <directory> before running.

	-u <username>			Run as user <username> after binding
					to privileged ports.

	Use of the "-t" option while still running as "root" doesn't
	enhance security on most systems.  The way chroot() is defined
	allows a process with root privileges to escape the chroot jail.

	The "-u" option is not currently useful on Linux kernels older
	than 2.3.99-pre3.  Linux threads are actually processes sharing a
	common address space.  An unfortunate side effect of this is that
	some system calls, e.g. setuid() that in a typical pthreads
	environment would affect all threads only affect the calling
	thread/process on Linux.  The good news is that BIND 9 uses the
	Linux kernel's capability mechanism to drop all root powers except
	the ability to bind() to a privileged port.  2.3.99-pre3 and later
	kernels allow a process to say that its capabilities should be
	retained after setuid().  If BIND 9 is compiled with 2.3.99-pre3 or
	later kernel .h files, the "-u" option will cause the server to
	run with the specified user id, but it will retain the capability
	to bind() to privileged ports.

	On systems with more than one CPU, the "-n" option should be used
	to indicate how many CPUs there are.  If the "-n" option is not
	provided, named will attempt to determine the number of available
	CPUs and use all of them.