BIND: could not configure root hints from 'named.root': file not found

[CyberLeo Kitsana]

On 10/01/2010 12:52 PM, Matthew wrote:
> I would be grateful for any pointers on how to resolve this.  I suspect
> the error message may not be exactly descriptive of whats happening.

Kinda.

Here's a few points to keep in mind when working with bind in FreeBSD:

* By default, named runs in a chroot jail rooted at /var/named/.

* For security reasons, named cannot write to anything in that tree,
except the dynamic, slave, and working directories.

* named uses its current working directory to resolve relative pathnames
in the configuration file.

* With a recent change to ISC Bind 9, named started complaining if it
couldn't write to its current working directory. At the time, this was
(chroot)/etc/namedb/; this was subsequently changed to
(chroot)/etc/namedb/working/ to make named happy without compromising
security.

When the working directory for named was (chroot)/etc/namedb/,
everything was peachy. Since this was changed, relative pathnames no
longer work as expected because the reference point is different. The
easiest solution is to alter your configuration file to include only
absolute pathnames, relative to the root of the jail.

The default named config file (in /var/named/etc/namedb/named.conf) is
an excellent source of examples for this.

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