Stopping a Name Server
1.20.1 Problem
You want to stop a running name server.
1.20.2 Solution
Use ndc (for BIND 8 name servers) or rndc (for BIND 9 name servers):
# ndc stop
or:
# rndc stop
1.20.3 Discussion
ndc stop and rndc stop both tell the running name server to clean up and exit. "Cleaning up," in this age of dynamically updated zones, means writing the zone data files of any "dirty" zones to disk. ("Dirty" zones are zones that have been dynamically updated but not yet written to disk.)
Should you ever need to stop the name server without saving "dirty" zones to disk, BIND 9 offers the halt command:
# rndc halt
If you don't have ndc or rndc at your disposal (and you won't be able to use rndc until you've set up rndc.conf and a controls statement, as described in Section 3.3), you can still kill named with signals. With BIND 8, use SIGTERM:
# kill `cat /var/run/named.pid`
With BIND 9, you can use SIGTERM or SIGINT:
# kill -INT `cat /var/run/named.pid`
1.20.4 See Also
Recipes Section 3.2 and Section 3.3 for setting up ndc and rndc, respectively, and "Controlling the Name Server" in Chapter 7 of DNS and BIND.