DNS and the Service Management Facility

The DNS server daemon, named, must be managed by using the Service Management Facility (SMF). For an overview of SMF, refer to Chapter 2, Managing Services (Overview), in Managing Services and Faults in Oracle Solaris 11.1. Also refer to the svcadm(1M), svcs(1), and svccfg(1M) man pages for more details.

The following list provides a short overview of some of the important information needed to use the SMF service to administer the DNS service.

• To perform administrative actions on this service, such as enabling, disabling, or restarting, use the svcadm command.

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  Tip - Temporarily disabling a service by using the -t option provides some protection for the service configuration. If the service is disabled with the -t option, the original settings are restored for the service after a reboot. If the service is disabled without -t, the service remains disabled after a reboot.

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• The Fault Managed Resource Identifiers (FMRIs) for the DNS service are svc:/network/dns/server:instance and svc:/network/dns/client:instance.

• You can query the status of the DNS server and client by using the svcs command.

  • The following is an example of the svcs command and its output:

    # svcs \*dns\*
    STATE          STIME    FMRI
    disabled       Nov_16   svc:/network/dns/multicast:default
    online         Nov_16   svc:/network/dns/server:default
    online         Nov_16   svc:/network/dns/client:default

  • The following is an example of svcs -l command and its output.

    # svcs -l /network/dns/server
    fmri         svc:/network/dns/server:default
    name         BIND DNS server
    enabled      true
    state        online
    next_state   none
    state_time   Tue Jul 26 19:26:12 2011
    logfile      /var/svc/log/network-dns-server:default.log
    restarter    svc:/system/svc/restarter:default
    contract_id  83
    manifest     /lib/svc/manifest/network/dns/server.xml
    dependency   require_all/none svc:/system/filesystem/local (online)
    dependency   require_any/error svc:/network/loopback (online)
    dependency   optional_all/error svc:/network/physical (online)

• If you need to start the DNS service with different options, change the properties of the svc:/network/dns/server service by using the svccfg command. For an example, see How to Configure DNS Server Options.

When the DNS server daemon, named, is managed by SMF, the server is automatically restarted when an unexpected event occurs that causes named to exit abnormally. Additionally, you can use the svcadm command to restart the service. The BIND-specific management that is available by using rndc command can be used simultaneously with SMF.