Greetings all,
I stumbled across an oddity in BIND that may be due to my ignorance or some
other environmental factor.
We have a pair of caching resolvers in a datacenter that ended up with the
following in the configuration:
forwarders {
// Cloudflare
1.1.1.1;
1.0.0.1;
// Quad9
9.9.9.9;
149.112.112.112;
//Cisco OpenDNS
208.67.222.222;
208.67.220.220;
};
forward first;
dnssec-enable no;
dnssec-validation no;
empty-zones-enable no;
};
zone "." IN {
type hint;
file "/dev/null";
};
In this configuration, the forward always fails. Not only does it fail, we see
no traffic leaving the server (tcpdump port 53)!
And since we don’t want these following the full recursion out to the internet,
root hints are intentionally disabled (we’re hoping for at least some data
hygiene by using these specific forwarders).
Setting it to ‘forward only’ resolved the issue.
Do I have something misconfigured?
More detail of named.conf (removed logging and internal zones):
options {
listen-on port 53 {
any;
};
directory "/var/named";
dump-file "/opt/named/cache_dump.db";
statistics-file "/var/named/data/named_stats.txt";
memstatistics-file "/var/named/data/named_mem_stats.txt";
recursing-file "/var/named/data/named.recursing";
secroots-file "/var/named/data/named.secroots";
allow-query { any; };
querylog yes;
recursion yes;
recursive-clients 50000;
tcp-clients 50000;
edns-udp-size 4096;
max-udp-size 4096;
bindkeys-file "/etc/named.root.key";
managed-keys-directory "/var/named/dynamic";
pid-file "/run/named/named.pid";
session-keyfile "/run/named/session.key";
forwarders {
1.1.1.1;
1.0.0.1;
9.9.9.9;
149.112.112.112;
208.67.222.222;
208.67.220.220;
};
forward first;
dnssec-enable no;
dnssec-validation no;
empty-zones-enable no;
};
zone "." IN {
type hint;
file "/dev/null";
};
include "/etc/named.rfc1912.zones";
include "/etc/named.root.key";
OS details:
# cat /etc/*release
NAME="Red Hat Enterprise Linux"
VERSION="8.10 (Ootpa)"
ID="rhel"
ID_LIKE="fedora"
VERSION_ID="8.10"
PLATFORM_ID="platform:el8"
PRETTY_NAME="Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.10 (Ootpa)"
ANSI_COLOR="0;31"
CPE_NAME="cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:8::baseos"
HOME_URL=https://www.redhat.com/
DOCUMENTATION_URL=https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/8
BUG_REPORT_URL=https://issues.redhat.com/
REDHAT_BUGZILLA_PRODUCT="Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8"
REDHAT_BUGZILLA_PRODUCT_VERSION=8.10
REDHAT_SUPPORT_PRODUCT="Red Hat Enterprise Linux"
REDHAT_SUPPORT_PRODUCT_VERSION="8.10"
Red Hat Enterprise Linux release 8.10 (Ootpa)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux release 8.10 (Ootpa)
BIND details:
BIND 9.11.36-RedHat-9.11.36-16.el8_10.4 (Extended Support Version) <id:68dbd5b>
running on Linux x86_64 4.18.0-553.56.1.el8_10.x86_64 #1 SMP Mon Jun 2 12:33:13
EDT 2025
built by make with '--build=x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu'
'--host=x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu' '--program-prefix='
'--disable-dependency-tracking' '--prefix=/usr' '--exec-prefix=/usr'
'--bindir=/usr/bin' '--sbindir=/usr/sbin' '--sysconfdir=/etc'
'--datadir=/usr/share' '--includedir=/usr/include' '--libdir=/usr/lib64'
'--libexecdir=/usr/libexec' '--sharedstatedir=/var/lib'
'--mandir=/usr/share/man' '--infodir=/usr/share/info'
'--with-python=/usr/libexec/platform-python' '--with-libtool'
'--localstatedir=/var' '--enable-threads' '--enable-ipv6'
'--enable-filter-aaaa' '--with-pic' '--disable-static'
'--includedir=/usr/include/bind9' '--with-tuning=large' '--with-libidn2'
'--enable-openssl-hash' '--with-geoip2' '--enable-native-pkcs11'
'--with-pkcs11=/usr/lib64/pkcs11/libsofthsm2.so' '--with-dlopen=yes'
'--with-dlz-ldap=yes' '--with-dlz-postgres=yes' '--with-dlz-mysql=yes'
'--with-dlz-filesystem=yes' '--with-dlz-bdb=yes' '--with-gssapi=yes'
'--disable-isc-spnego' '--with-lmdb=no' '--with-libjson' '--enable-dnstap'
'--with-cmocka' '--enable-fixed-rrset'
'--with-docbook-xsl=/usr/share/sgml/docbook/xsl-stylesheets'
'--enable-full-report' 'build_alias=x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu'
'host_alias=x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu' 'CFLAGS= -O2 -g -pipe -Wall
-Werror=format-security -Wp,-D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -Wp,-D_GLIBCXX_ASSERTIONS
-fexceptions -fstack-protector-strong -grecord-gcc-switches
-specs=/usr/lib/rpm/redhat/redhat-hardened-cc1
-specs=/usr/lib/rpm/redhat/redhat-annobin-cc1 -m64 -mtune=generic
-fasynchronous-unwind-tables -fstack-clash-protection -fcf-protection'
'LDFLAGS=-Wl,-z,relro -Wl,-z,now -specs=/usr/lib/rpm/redhat/redhat-hardened-ld'
'CPPFLAGS= -DDIG_SIGCHASE'
'PKG_CONFIG_PATH=:/usr/lib64/pkgconfig:/usr/share/pkgconfig'
compiled by GCC 8.5.0 20210514 (Red Hat 8.5.0-23)
compiled with OpenSSL version: OpenSSL 1.1.1k FIPS 25 Mar 2021
linked to OpenSSL version: OpenSSL 1.1.1k FIPS 25 Mar 2021
compiled with libxml2 version: 2.9.7
linked to libxml2 version: 20907
compiled with libjson-c version: 0.13.1
linked to libjson-c version: 0.13.1
compiled with zlib version: 1.2.11
linked to zlib version: 1.2.11
linked to maxminddb version: 1.2.0
compiled with protobuf-c version: 1.3.0
linked to protobuf-c version: 1.3.0
threads support is enabled
default paths:
named configuration: /etc/named.conf
rndc configuration: /etc/rndc.conf
DNSSEC root key: /etc/bind.keys
nsupdate session key: /var/run/named/session.key
named PID file: /var/run/named/named.pid
named lock file: /var/run/named/named.lock
geoip-directory: /usr/share/GeoIP
David Reynolds
Epiq | Linux Support
Portland, OR 97227
Mobile: 503 457-2262
Email: dreyno...@epiqglobal.com<mailto:dreyno...@epiqglobal.com>
People. Partnership. Performance.
www.epiqglobal.com<http://www.epiqglobal.com/>
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