Bind logging configuration

Configuring the way bind logs events works essentially in two steps: first we need to configure the channels bind will use for logging, then we have to specify which event we like to log to a particular channel.

Step 1: create the directory for storing logs

#> mkdir /var/log/bind
#> chown bind.bind /var/log/bind

Step 2: update named.conf configuration file

logging {
        channel b_log {
                file "/var/log/bind/bind.log" versions 9 size 1m;
                 print-time yes;
                 print-category yes;
                 print-severity yes;
                 severity info;
        };
        channel b_query {
                file "/var/log/bind/query.log" versions 4 size 1m;
                print-time yes;
                severity info;
        };
        category default { default_syslog; default_debug; b_log; };
        category queries { b_query; };
 };

All parameters are well covered in the bind documentation, so please refer to it for an in-depth explanation; I'll just add a quick note about versions and size parameters.

versions tells bind to keep a fixed numbers of backups of the log file (it acts like a rotation mechanism similar to logrotate), while size specifies the maximum size of the log file (once the size exceed, logs are rotated).