BIND 9.3.2 Release Notes (5900-2140, December 2011)

New options to enable and disable IXFR
In BIND 9.3.2, the incremental zone transfer (IXFR) feature is enabled by default. describes the
new options available in the options statement that can be used to enable and disable IXFR.
Table 4 Options to Enable and Disable IXFR
DescriptionOption
Determines whether the local server, which acts as a master, responds with
an incremental zone transfer when the remove slave server requests an IXFR.
provide-ixfr yes_or_no;
If the provide-ixfr option is set to yes, incremental transfer is provided
whenever possible. If this option is set to no, all transfers to the remote server
is non-incremental.
If the provide-ixfr option is not set, the value of provide-ixfr in the
view or global options statement is used as default.
Determines whether the local server, acting as a slave, requests incremental
zone transfers from a remote master server. If this option is not set, the value
request-ixfr yes_or_no;
of request-ixfr in the view or global options statement is used as
default. If this option is set to yes, the server, by default, collects statistical
data of all zones in the server. If this option is set to no, the server requests
a full zone transfer (AXFR).
Loads a new version of the master zone from the zone file of the server, or
receives a new version of the slave file by a non-incremental zone transfer.
ixfr-from-differences
yes_or_no;
If this option is set to yes, when the server receives a new version of a slave
file by a non-incremental zone transfer, the server compares the new version
of the master zone with the previous version of master zone and calculates
the set of differences. The differences are logged in the journal file of the
zone such that the changes can be transmitted to downstream slaves as an
incremental zone transfer. If this option is set to no, the name server must
perform a complete zone transfer to the slave server.
Transition support for IPv4 and IPv6
BIND 9.3.2 provides transition support for IPv4 and IPv6 to solve the problem caused by lack of
support for either IPv4 or IPv6 address on a host system. It also provides the dual-stack-servers
option to enable the transition support for IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. This option specifies host names
or addresses of systems that access both IPv4 and IPv6 transports. If the host name is specified, a
name server must be able to resolve a host name by using only the transport supported by the
name server. If the dual-stack-servers option is used in dual-stacked system, this option does
not have any influence if access to the IPv4 or IPv6 transport is disabled on the command line using
the named -4 command or named -6 command, respectively.
The syntax for the dual-stack-servers option in the options statement in the /etc/
named.conf file is as follows:
[ dual-stack-servers [port ip_port] { ( domain_name [port ip_port] |
ip_addr [port ip_port] ) ; ... }; ]
New commands in the rndc utility
The following are new commands in the remote name daemon control (rndc) utility:
• retransfer zone [class [view]]
This command enables you to retransfer the given zone from the master name server.
• freeze zone [class [view]]
This command enables you to suspend updates to a dynamic zone and enables you to edit
a zone that is usually updated dynamically. This command results in changes to the journal
BIND 9.3.2 features 9