How Does eG Enterprise Monitor BIND DNS?

eG Enterprise performs agent-based monitoring of BIND DNS. The eG agent should be deployed on the Linux server hosting BIND DNS. To monitor BIND DNS, this agent typically 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, the eG agent runs the rndc stats command of this utility to pull useful statistics related to the performance of BIND DNS. 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 the eG agent to run the rndc stats command and then read from the statistics-file, the following pre-requisites need to be fulfilled:

• The eG agent install user should have permissions to run the rndc stats command and read from the statistics-file. To grant these permissions to the eG agent install user, 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, when configuring the tests for BIND DNS, make sure you set the USE SUDO parameter to Yes.

• Every test run by the eG agent should be configured with the following details:

  • The absolute/full path of the folder in which RNDC is located;
  • The absolute/full path to the statistics-file to which BIND writes all performance statistics