Bind as caching server

I am on a dialup connection to the Internet and have installed Bind to speed
things up a bit. It seems to be helping.

Out of curiosity, and to learn a bit, is the list of cached addresses
available for viewing in a file?

Doug.
--
Don't knock the weather. If it didn't change once in a while, nine out of
ten people couldn't start a conversation.
-Kin Hubbard

On Tue, 13 Apr 2004, Doug Laidlaw <laidlaws@myaccess.com.au> wrote:
> I am on a dialup connection to the Internet and have installed Bind to speed
> things up a bit. It seems to be helping.
>
> Out of curiosity, and to learn a bit, is the list of cached addresses
> available for viewing in a file?

You do not say which bind, but typically cache is only maintained in RAM
because the info could be outdated if reloaded later. The cache is
flushed if you restart named.

You can use 'dig' to tell how long it will be until a particular name
expires from your cache (default units are seconds unless followed by m,
h, d, etc.)

--
David Efflandt - All spam ignored http://www.de-srv.com/

On 2004-04-13, Doug Laidlaw <laidlaws@myaccess.com.au> wrote:
> I am on a dialup connection to the Internet and have installed Bind to speed
> things up a bit. It seems to be helping.

If you are on dialup pdnsd is made spacially for you. I'm using it for
years and it works good.

>
> Out of curiosity, and to learn a bit, is the list of cached addresses
> available for viewing in a file?

pdnsd can't (AFAIK)

Best Regards,
Radoslaw

--
"Oceniaj± mnie, choæ nic o mnie nie wiedz±. To dlatego jestem sam" - Shrek
================================================== =========================
e-mail: sad[na]rpg[kropka]pl JID: radekg[na]jabber[kropka]atman[kropka]pl

On Tue, 13 Apr 2004 23:01:26 +1000, Doug Laidlaw wrote:

> I am on a dialup connection to the Internet and have installed Bind to speed
> things up a bit. It seems to be helping.
>
> Out of curiosity, and to learn a bit, is the list of cached addresses
> available for viewing in a file?

If you have 'rndc' as part of your bind distribution, 'rndc dumbdb' will
dump the cache to $VAR/named_dump.db in a readable format.

--
Some say the Wired doesn't have political borders like the real world,
but there are far too many nonsense-spouting anarchists or idiots who
think that pranks are a revolution.

David Efflandt wrote:

> On Tue, 13 Apr 2004, Doug Laidlaw <laidlaws@myaccess.com.au> wrote:
>> I am on a dialup connection to the Internet and have installed Bind to
>> speed
>> things up a bit. It seems to be helping.
>>
>> Out of curiosity, and to learn a bit, is the list of cached addresses
>> available for viewing in a file?
>
> You do not say which bind, but typically cache is only maintained in RAM
> because the info could be outdated if reloaded later. The cache is
> flushed if you restart named.
>
> You can use 'dig' to tell how long it will be until a particular name
> expires from your cache (default units are seconds unless followed by m,
> h, d, etc.)
>
Thanks, David. Mdk installs Bind 9. What I want is something that will
keep lookups between one bootup and the next, so that for example, there
will be a local reference to my bank's IP address. If that has to be
looked up afresh each day (and I use it only once a day,) the whole thing
seems pointless. pdnsd http://www.phys.uu.nl/~rombouts/pdnsd.html
(mentioned by Radoslaw) claims to write the cache to the HD on exit.
This sounds like what I need.

Doug.
--
People want economy and they will pay any price to get it.
- Lee Iacocca.

Rados?aw Grzanka wrote:

> On 2004-04-13, Doug Laidlaw <laidlaws@myaccess.com.au> wrote:
>> I am on a dialup connection to the Internet and have installed Bind to
>> speed
>> things up a bit. It seems to be helping.
>
> If you are on dialup pdnsd is made spacially for you. I'm using it for
> years and it works good.
>
>>
>> Out of curiosity, and to learn a bit, is the list of cached addresses
>> available for viewing in a file?
>
> pdnsd can't (AFAIK)
>
> Best Regards,
> Radoslaw
>
Thanks Radoslaw. I will investigate it.

Doug.
--
The best car safety device is a rear-view mirror with a cop in it.
- Dudley Moore.
(Pity computer security isn't that cheap.)

Owen wrote:

> If you have 'rndc' as part of your bind distribution, 'rndc dumbdb' will
> dump the cache to $VAR/named_dump.db in a readable format.

If you did a standard installation of 9.1 and used Pat's caching
example, the command is 'rndc dumpdb' and the resulting file is:
/var/named/named_dump.db - It's a neat little utility.

LittleJohn
Madison, AL

LittleJohn wrote:

> Owen wrote:
>
>> If you have 'rndc' as part of your bind distribution, 'rndc dumbdb' will
>> dump the cache to $VAR/named_dump.db in a readable format.
>
> If you did a standard installation of 9.1 and used Pat's caching
> example, the command is 'rndc dumpdb' and the resulting file is:
> /var/named/named_dump.db - It's a neat little utility.

Oops... That should say "Slackware 9.1"

Littlejohn
Madison, AL

On Wed, 14 Apr 2004, Doug Laidlaw <laidlaws@myaccess.com.au> wrote:
> David Efflandt wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 13 Apr 2004, Doug Laidlaw <laidlaws@myaccess.com.au> wrote:
>>> I am on a dialup connection to the Internet and have installed Bind to
>>> speed
>>> things up a bit. It seems to be helping.
>>>
>>> Out of curiosity, and to learn a bit, is the list of cached addresses
>>> available for viewing in a file?
>>
>> You do not say which bind, but typically cache is only maintained in RAM
>> because the info could be outdated if reloaded later. The cache is
>> flushed if you restart named.
>>
>> You can use 'dig' to tell how long it will be until a particular name
>> expires from your cache (default units are seconds unless followed by m,
>> h, d, etc.)
>>
> Thanks, David. Mdk installs Bind 9. What I want is something that will
> keep lookups between one bootup and the next, so that for example, there
> will be a local reference to my bank's IP address. If that has to be
> looked up afresh each day (and I use it only once a day,) the whole thing
> seems pointless. pdnsd http://www.phys.uu.nl/~rombouts/pdnsd.html
> (mentioned by Radoslaw) claims to write the cache to the HD on exit.
> This sounds like what I need.

To use that cache file, you would need to use the -x switch for named,
however, that says the following:

-x cache-file
Load data from cache-file into the cache of the
default view.

Warning: This option must not be used. It is only
of interest to BIND 9 developers and may be removed
or changed in a future release.

Also, what if your bank does load balancing or changes their DNS? The day
old reloaded cache data may point to the wrong IP (not sure if cache
expire times would time down just while named is running, or from when
data was originally fetched).

--
David Efflandt - All spam ignored http://www.de-srv.com/

Doug Laidlaw <laidlaws@myaccess.com.au> said:
>I am on a dialup connection to the Internet and have installed Bind to speed
>things up a bit. It seems to be helping.
>
>Out of curiosity, and to learn a bit, is the list of cached addresses
>available for viewing in a file?

Depending on your bind version, you should have either sig_named or
rndc command available for controlling the bind. See manual pages
(or command helps) for these to find out the correct syntax for dumping
the cached data.
--
Wolf a.k.a. Juha Laiho Espoo, Finland
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