Window NT/2000 implementation of BIND 8.3.x/8.4.x Date: 9-Jan-2002. This is a release of BIND 8.3.x/8.4.x for Windows NT/2000 systems. This release has undergone a some testing, but if you choose to install this kit, you should run it first on a test system, preferably as a slave server. While I have cleaned up all of the NT-specific issues and bugs that I know about, you should report any issues to the bind-users@isc.org mailing list. The kit can be installed on both Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000 (any type). NOTE: IPv6 testing has not been done. It was not a goal of this port to Windows NT. We would, however, be interested to hear whether or not it works with IPv6 sockets. There has been work done to retrieve the IPv6 Interfaces, but there has been no real testing. Kit Installation Information Unpack the kit into any convenient directory and run the BINDInstall program. This will install the named and associated programs into the correct directories and set up the required registry keys. If you have been running BIND 8.2.x on the system before, you do not need to uninstall it first. If you have been running any other version of DNS, you will need to go to the services control panel and stop and disable it before installing this version of BIND or run its uninstall program. BINDInstall copies itself to the same directory as named and can be run from there to uninstall BIND. Controlling BIND Windows NT/2000 has a Windows application called BINDCtrl which should be a complete replacement for Unix's ndc (named daemon controller) program. A command-line version, BINDCmd, is also available and performs almost identical functions as BINDCtrl. In addition named is installed as a system service and will start up automatically when the system boots. BINDCtrl and BINDCmd are placed in the same directory as named: System32\dns\bin and can be used from there. The installer does not create a menu shortcut or desktop shortcut, so you may choose to do this yourself. Troubleshooting By default all logging information goes into the application event log. You can examine this information by going to the event viewer and selecting the Application Event Log. If you have specified a log file in named.conf you should also look into that log file. If the BIND Service fails to start, check to see whether or not you have placed named.conf in the dns\etc directory in the path you specified during the installation. DNS Tools I have built versions of the following tools for Windows NT: dig, nslookup and host. These tools are not copied anywhere. You should copy them to any convenient directory. Note that these tools require libbind.dll so it is important that this file is in the path. The install places this file in the system32 directory so the tools will work on the system that you install BIND on. If you wish to use the tools on another NT system you can copy the tools along with the libbind.dll to that other system and run them there. Again, libbind.dll must be in the path. The simplest way of accomplishing this is to copy the tools and libbind.dll to the same directory. The tools will NOT run on Win9x, only WinNT and Win2000. Please be aware that the tools MUST retrieve a nameserver IP address in order to work. There is a specific order that will be used to find the addresses. The order is as follows: it will look for the resolv.conf file in system32\Drivers\etc and try to open and read that file. Only if no nameserver IP Address has been found will it use the registry settings to obtain a nameserver IP Address. The main implication of this is that the DNS Tools MAY behave differently on a system running named than on one NOT running named, depending on a) whether or not you have customized resolv.conf and b) have moved the nameserver to a different system but not modified resolv.conf. Known Problems On Windows 2000 the tools may fail to work because they need a nameserver IP address and the file resolv.conf which lists the nameserver IP addresses may not exist in the system32\Drivers\etc directory. Since the location of the list in the Windows registry has changed, the resolver cannot find the list. The workaround is to create the resolv.conf file. Windows NT 4.0 does not have this problem and will work without the resolv.conf file. Danny Mayer mayer@gis.net