MaraDNS now runs automatically on reboot but always times out...

[Greg Platt - Platt Consultants]

While I was testing my maradns server today and still using manual starts of


 

 

myserver #: ~/etc//usr/sbin/maradns 

 

 

to get mara going, I did a system restart. Afterwards, when I tried to start
mara with 

 

Ess000503:~# /usr/sbin/maradns

 

As I had before, I received:  

 

 

Log: Root directory changed

Fatal error: Problem binding to port 53.

 

System said: Cannot assign requested address

 

 

Since I was suddenly getting this error, I eventually discovered maradns was
now starting automatically and was already running as a resident process
(therefore, it had port 53 tied up). AFAIK, I had done nothing specific to
make the auto-start of maradns happen. It just happened. 

 

Ever since then, maradns has refused to respond to queries it did reply to
before earlier for domains its supposed to be hosting. 

 

For hours I couldn't figure out why.

 

Then an hour ago I looked close at the command line shown by ps for maradns
and immediately saw the problem.

 

 

myserver:~# ps aux |grep maradns

nobody    2284  0.0  0.0   1820   592 ?        S    Aug04   0:00
/usr/sbin/maradns -f /etc/maradns/mararc

root      2285  0.0  0.0   1560   500 ?        S    Aug04   0:00 logger -p
daemon.notice -t maradns.etc_maradns_mararc

root      2751  0.0  0.0   2856   716 pts/1    S+   00:07   0:00 grep
maradns

 

 

maradns is auto-starting with the following command line:

 

/usr/sbin/maradns -f /etc/maradns/mararc

 

 

That's NOT the mararc file I created and was testing with! My test mararc
file was actually /etc/mararc and since I was always starting maradns
manually, it was consistently using that file because I was always starting
maradns from the /etc directory.

 

Once I realized what was wrong, I tried to fix the problem by saving a copy
of the original mararc /etc/maradns/mararc file. Then I moved my test copy
of mararc into that directory. After I did that, I rebooted the server. 

 

But NOW, maradns either fails or refuses to auto-start and when I try to
start it manually, I STILL get the port error! 

 

Log: Root directory changed

Fatal error: Problem binding to port 53.

 

System said: Cannot assign requested address!

 

 

Bottom line: earlier today when I did:

 

 

myserver:~# askmara -n -v Zmydnshost.com. 219.18.180.68

 

 

I was getting a long and detailed report from the server. But NOW when I do
the same thing, the server spins its wheels for a while and I get: 

 

 

myserver:~# askmara -n -v Zmydnshost.com. 219.18.180.68

Querying the server with the IP 219.18.180.68

Hard Error: Timeout

 

 

The odd thing about this is that what WASN'T working earlier was
NameBasedHosting in Apache2. (That's WHY I was still testing mara when the
sh*t hit the fan) Now, it appears I've got the NameBasedHosting working okay
for my test domain "homeonetherange.com" because I can now go to the browser
and type in "homeontherange.com" and I get the correct site displayed  --
even when that's not the default site in Apache. But when I try the other
domain (mydnshost.com), it never displays in the browser and askmara
consistently displays the timeout error. you see above.

 

Clearly the automatic startup process has introduced an error during startup
that's preventing maradns from working right. How the heck do I correct
this??

 

HELP!!! Can ANYONE tell me what to do to FIX this problem? 

 

Thanks!