bind9 fails to start

Question

I just bought a dedicated server and it is running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. I followed this guide to install Bind9

Now I get this in the terminal when I start it up:

    Adding system user `bind' (UID 118) ...
Adding new user `bind' (UID 118) with group `bind' ...
Not creating home directory `/var/cache/bind'.
wrote key file "/etc/bind/rndc.key"
#
 * Starting domain name service... bind9                                 [fail]
invoke-rc.d: initscript bind9, action "start" failed.
dpkg: error processing bind9 (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 bind9
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

Can anyone help with this? I'm not sure what went wrong, but I'm sure it's something with that guide since I don't remember that many steps in my last Bind9 installation.

Answer 1

See log file "/var/log/syslog".

Feb  5 12:03:52 HOSTNAME named[8835]: starting BIND 9.7.2-P3 -u bind
Feb  5 12:03:52 HOSTNAME named[8835]: ERROR
Feb  5 12:03:52 HOSTNAME named[8835]: exiting (due to fatal error)

Then fix problem and install bind9 again:

$sudo apt-get install bind9

For debug, run named in foreground and send log to console:

# /usr/sbin/named -u bind -g -d 1

Answer 2

Did you run named-checkconf? And named-checkzone on each zone file. These tools are to ensure that your configurations are, if not completely correct, at least good enough that bind can run. If that doesn't immediately show you how to fix your problem, post the output.