Default Parameters for BindNameServTest

This test tracks the name resolution queries to BIND DNS and reports the count of queries that were processed successfully, the number of queries that failed, and the number that was dropped/rejected. This way, the test points to issues in query processing. Additionally, the test also captures the response codes returned by BIND DNS , thereby revealing error responses to administrators and their probable causes.

This page depicts the default parameters that need to be configured for the BindNameServTest test.

• The TEST PERIOD list box helps the user to decide how often this test needs to be executed.

• To monitor BIND DNS, this test uses a name server control utility in bind called Remote Name Daemon Control (RNDC). RNDC is a command line utility that allows command line control of the administration and operations of a name server, both locally and remotely. Periodically, this test runs the rndc stats command of this utility to pull metrics of interest. To enable the test to run this command, configure the full path to the folder where RNDC is located, against the PATH OF RNDC parameter. The default location of RNDC is /usr/sbin. If it is installed in a different location in your environment, then specify the same here.

• This test runs the rndc stats command of to pull metrics of interest from the target BIND DNS server. This command instructs BIND to dump the statistics to a statistics-file configured in the configuration file for the named server - /etc/named.conf. To enable this test to read from this statistics-file, specify the full path to the statistics-file against PATH OF RNDC OUTPUT FILE parameter. By default, metrics are written to the named_stats.txt file in the /var/named/data/ folder. If chroot is enabled, then this file will typically be available in the /var/named/chroot/var/named/data folder.

• To run this test and report metrics, the eG agent install user should have permissions to run the rndc stats command and read from the statistics-file. If the eG agent install user possesses these privileges, then set the USE SUDO flag to No. If the eG agent install user does not have the required permissions, then do the following:

  • Edit the sudoers file on the target host and append an entry of the following format to it:

    <eG_agent_install_user>; ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:<Command>;

    For instance, if the eG agent install user is eguser, then the entry in the sudoers file should be:

    eguser ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: rndc stats

  • Then, save the file.

  • Finally, set the USE SUDO parameter to Yes.

• Once the above values are provided, click on the UPDATE button to register the changes made.

When changing default configurations of tests, the values with “$” indicate variables that will be replaced by the eG system according to the specific server being managed - for instance, $hostName is the host/nickname of the target host, $port is the port number of the server being monitored. E.g., for a server xyz:80, $hostName will be changed automatically by the eG manager to “xyz*” and $port will be changed to “80” when configuring a test.