How to Change From BIND to NSD

Berkley Internet Name Domain (BIND) and Name Server Daemon (NSD) are open-source Domain Name Server (DNS) implementations that comprise the DNS services on Internet backbone sites. BIND is the de facto industry standard for IP-to-name resolution, but some other major DNS sites run NSD and other DNS software in order to prevent a single point of failure, i.e. the same vulnerabilities easily replicated due to the same or similar software.

Instructions

1. Download and extract bind2nsd to a convenient directory, since you may have to access it in terminal. Copy your named.conf file and change the name to "named.backup", or something similar. Open "Terminal," and type "# ./install.sh" to install bind2nsd.

2. Copy bind2nsd.conf to "etc/named" or whichever folder holds "named.conf" on your DNS server. Type "bind2nsd" and hit "Enter." Your cursor should hesitate, and then return to the prompt. "Nsdsync" also runs as a script, converting the server to NSD. This is the only indication that the "named.conf" file transferred to NSD format.

3. Restart the DNS service and it should be running in NSD.

References

• bind2nsd Conversion Script
• FreeBSD Handbook: 29.6 Domain Name System (DNS); Chern Lee, et al.