One of my DNS servers lost its mind tonight – still not sure why. Maybe I should update the DNS software approaching <ahem> a decade old. It’s not exposed to the Internet, so it’s not a huge concern. But when it died – man, what a domino effect. I mean, it’s just my home network I’m talking about, not my work network. But it killed my e-mail, Internet access, database connectivity, and a bunch of other stuff. It was horrible. I knew what the problem was, but knowing what the problem was didn’t make the silly thing respond to queries. I ended up reinstalling the service, after which it responded to local queries. But then it wouldn’t recurse. Finally I got recursion working, and life is back to normal again.
It’s been in the back of my mind to move the DNS lives to a shiny new BIND 9.3.4 on Ubuntu. Maybe it’s time to move that up on the priority list. I’ve really let my network servers slide over the past year because I’ve been a little preoccupied with other things. You know, things…