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named won't start, unknown key 'rndc-key'

I have a VPS running Centos 6.4 and WHM 11.44.1

Yesterday I started receiving emails saying that the named service had failed and couldn't be restarted.

When attempting to start the server I get the following

Starting named: /etc/init.d/named: line 97: 28896 Aborted /usr/sbin/named-checkconf $ckcf_options ${named_conf} > /dev/null 2>&1

Error in named configuration:
/etc/named.conf:4: unknown key 'rndc-key'
/etc/rndc.key:1: key '': bad key name
/etc/rndc.key:1: key '': bad key name
/etc/rndc.key:1: key '': bad key name
mem.c:1246: REQUIRE(ctx->references == 1) failed, back trace
#0 0x7fce761546c6 in ??
#1 0x7fce7615489a in ??
#2 0x7fce761667a2 in ??
#3 0x403571 in ??
#4 0x7fce7499bd1d in ??
#5 0x4025d9 in ??

In an attempt to fix the issue I've updated WHM to the latest version and ran the command /scripts/fixrndc as described on various websites on the internet, but it still doesn't seem to resolve the issue.

I'm hoping someone will be able to help me fix this issue.

duncanb7

Are you using cpanel?

If so, try it ,rebulid the /etc/named.conf file, it may work

/scripts/rebuilddnsconfig

Duncan

SheppardDigital

ASKER

During the rebuild it tries to restarted named and I get the same error as above.

duncanb7

you are using cpanel, right ?

Duncan

SheppardDigital

ASKER

whm/cpanel

duncanb7

when you rebullid it , did you rename the file /etc/named.conf ?

Duncan

SheppardDigital

ASKER

I didn't rename any files when I ran /scripts/rebuilddnsconfig

SheppardDigital

ASKER

If it helps, this is the content of /etc/rndc.conf

key "" {
        algorithm hmac-md5;
        secret "";
};

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and this is the top of the file /etc/named.conf

include "/etc/rndc.key";

controls {
        inet 127.0.0.1 allow { localhost; } keys { "rndc-key"; };
};

options {
    /* make named use port 53 for the source of all queries, to allow
         * firewalls to block all ports except 53:
         */

    // query-source    port 53;

    /* We no longer enable this by default as the dns posion exploit
        has forced many providers to open up their firewalls a bit */

    // Put files that named is allowed to write in the data/ directory:
    directory                "/var/named"; // the default
    pid-file                 "/var/run/named/named.pid";
    dump-file                "data/cache_dump.db";
    statistics-file          "data/named_stats.txt";
   /* memstatistics-file     "data/named_mem_stats.txt"; */
    allow-transfer {"none";};
};

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It looks to me like rdnc-key isn't defined in the rndc.conf file. I guess this is causing the problem, but how do I re-create that key?

SheppardDigital

ASKER

Just to add, I've tried renaming the rndc.conf file and running the /scripts/fixrndc commend, but again, it doesn't generate a key.

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

duncanb7

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