Technical data

Configuring and Managing BIND
5.3 Configuring the BIND Server (BIND 8.1)
channel default_syslog {
syslog daemon; # send to syslog’s daemon facility
severity info; # only send priority info and higher
};
channel default_debug {
file "TCPIP$BIND_RUN.LOG"; # write to TCPIP$BIND_RUN.LOG in the
# working directory
severity dynamic; # log at the server’s current debug level
};
channel default_stderr {# writes to stderr
file "stderr"; # this is illustrative only; there’s currently
# no way of specifying an internal file
# descriptor in the configuration language.
severity info; # only send priority info and higher
};
channel null {
null; # toss anything sent to this channel
};
Once a channel is defined, it cannot be redefined. Thus you cannot alter the built-
in channels directly, but you can modify the default logging by pointing categories
at channels you have defined.
5.3.1.2 Category Phrase
There are many categories, so you can send the logs you want to see anywhere,
without seeing logs you do not want. If you do not specify a list of channels for
a category, then log messages in that category are sent to the default category
instead. If you do not specify a default category, the following ‘‘default default’’ is
used:
category default { default_syslog; default_debug; };
For example, if you want to log security events to a file but you also want to keep
the default logging behavior, specify the following:
channel my_security_channel {
file "my_security_file";
severity info;
};
category security { my_security_channel;
default_syslog;
default_debug;
};
To discard all messages in a category, specify the null channel:
category lame-servers { null; };
category cname { null; };
The following categories are available:
default The catch-all. Many things are not categorized, and they end up here.
Also, if you do not specify any channels for a category, the default
category is used instead. If you do not define the default category, the
following definition is used:
category default { default_syslog; default_debug; };
config High-level configuration file processing.
parser Low-level configuration file processing.
queries A short log message is generated for every query the server receives.
Configuring and Managing BIND 5–9