rndc

rndc controls the operation of a name server. It supersedes the ndc utility that was provided in old BIND releases. If rndc is invoked with no command line options or arguments, it prints a short summary of the supported commands and the available options and their arguments.

rndc communicates with the name server over a TCP connection, sending commands authenticated with digital signatures. In the current versions of rndc and named the only supported authentication algorithm is HMAC-MD5, which uses a shared secret on each end of the connection. This provides TSIG-style authentication for the command request and the name server's response. All commands sent over the channel must be signed by a key_id known to the server.

rndc reads a configuration file to determine how to contact the name server and decide what algorithm and key it should use.

Documentation

• man 8 'rndc' [EN]

Syntax

rndc [PARAMETER ...] SUBCOMMAND

Subcommands & Parameters

-s SERVER

SERVER is the name or address of the server which matches a server statement in the configuration file for rndc. If no server is supplied on the command line, the host named by the default-server clause in the options statement of the rndc configuration file will be used.

dumpdb [-all|-cache|-zone] [VIEW ...]

Dump the server’s caches (default) and/or zones to the dump file for the specified VIEWs. If no view is specified, all views are dumped.

flush

Flushes the server’s cache.

halt [-p]

Stop the server immediately. Recent changes made through dynamic update or IXFR are not saved to the master files, but will be rolled forward from the journal files when the server is restarted. If -p is specified named’s process id is returned. This allows an external process to determine when named had completed halting.

notrace

Sets the server’s debugging level to 0.

reconfig

Reload the configuration file and load new zones, but do not reload existing zone files even if they have changed. This is faster than a full reload when there is a large number of zones because it avoids the need to examine the modification times of the zones files.

reload

Reload configuration file and zones.

reload ZONE [CLASS [VIEW]]

Reload the given ZONE.

retransfer ZONE [CLASS [VIEW]]

Retransfer the given slave ZONE from the master server.

stats

Write server statistics to the statistics file.

status

Display status of the server.

stop [-p]

Stop the server, making sure any recent changes made through dynamic update or IXFR are first saved to the master files of the updated zones. If -p is specified named’s process id is returned. This allows an external process to determine when named had completed stopping.

trace

Increment the servers debugging level by one.

trace VALUE

Sets the server’s debugging level to an explicit VALUE.