DNS and the Service Management Facility

The DNS/BIND named service can be managed by using the Service Management Facility (SMF). For an overview of SMF, refer to Chapter 16, Managing Services (Overview), in System Administration Guide: Basic Administration. Also refer to the svcadm(1M), svcs(1), and svccfg(1M) man pages for more details. Also review the DNS server manifest, server.xml, in /var/svc/manifest/network/dns.

• Administrative actions on this service, such as enabling, disabling, or restarting, can be performed by using 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 would be restored for the service after a reboot. If the service is disabled without -t, the service will remain disabled after 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.

  • Example of the svcs command and output.

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

  • Example of svcs -l command and output.

    # svcs -l /network/dns/server
    fmri         svc:/network/dns/server:default
    name         Internet domain name server (DNS)
    enabled      true
    state        online
    next_state   none
    restarter    svc:/system/svc/restarter:default
    contract_id  25 
    dependency   require_all/none svc:/system/filesystem/minimal (online)
    dependency   require_all/none file://localhost/etc/named.conf (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 (for example with a configuration file other than /etc/named.conf), change the start method property of the DNS server manifest by using the svccfg command.

• Multiple SMF service instances are only needed if you want to run multiple copies of BIND 9 name service. Each additional instance can be specified in the DNS server manifest with a different start method.

While it is recommended that you use svcadm to administer the server, you can use rndc as well. SMF is aware of the state change of the BIND 9 named service, whether administered by using svcadm or rndc.

Note - SMF will not be aware of the BIND 9 named service if the service is manually executed from the command line.