I hope someone can help, I've been beating my head against this for the last 24hours. I just did a fresh install of Fedora. The install seemed to go well, so I started restoring all my files. I checked the new named.conf file and all the header stuff at the top matched up exactly with my old one. (Which was from a RedHat 9 install, so same major version of bind) So I copied my named.conf file into /etc. I then copied all my zone files into /var/named. (Not replacing the hint file) Then I started bind.. It will resolve other domains with no problem, but when I query it about a domain that it is master for it gives me a ** server can't find thedames.com: SERVFAIL In my log file all I get is a lame server error.. Mar 7 20:56:24 bender named[22199]: lame server resolving 'thedames.com' (in 'thedames.com'?): 209.75.97.4#53 So my server clearly doesn't think that it has info for those zones. At first I thought this was a permissions issue. However at this point my named.conf file and all my zone files are 777 with an owner of named. So I don't think that is an issue.. I don't get any errors when restarting named. It just happily says that its loading named.conf and that everything is great. Mar 7 20:48:55 bender named[22199]: starting BIND 9.2.2-P3 -u named -t /var/named/chroot Mar 7 20:48:55 bender named[22199]: using 1 CPU Mar 7 20:48:55 bender named[22199]: loading configuration from '/etc/named.conf' Mar 7 20:48:55 bender named[22199]: no IPv6 interfaces found Mar 7 20:48:55 bender named[22199]: listening on IPv4 interface lo, 127.0.0.1#53 Mar 7 20:48:55 bender named[22199]: listening on IPv4 interface eth0, 209.75.97.2#53 Mar 7 20:48:55 bender named[22199]: command channel listening on 127.0.0.1#953 Mar 7 20:48:55 bender named[22199]: running Mar 7 17:48:55 bender named: named startup succeeded If I run named-checkconf on my named.conf file I get the following: [root@bender etc]# named-checkconf -t /etc/ named.conf named.conf:4: change directory to '/var/named' failed: file not found named.conf:4: parsing failed I had my friend run that same command on his server thou, and he got the same error. I think I'm running the command wrong. Here is my current named.conf file, and one of my zone files: // generated by named-bootconf.pl options { directory "/var/named"; /* * If there is a firewall between you and nameservers you want * to talk to, you might need to uncomment the query-source * directive below. Previous versions of BIND always asked * questions using port 53, but BIND 8.1 uses an unprivileged * port by default. */ // query-source address * port 53; }; // // a caching only nameserver config // controls { inet 127.0.0.1 allow { localhost; } keys { rndckey; }; }; zone "." IN { type hint; file "named.ca"; }; zone "localhost" IN { type master; file "localhost.zone"; allow-update { none; }; }; zone "0.0.127.in-addr.arpa" IN { type master; file "named.local"; allow-update { none; }; }; include "/etc/rndc.key"; zone "vmfaq.com"{ type master; file "vmfaq.com"; }; zone "ethiopianet.net"{ type master; file "./ethiopianet.net"; }; zone "thecryptorium.com"{ type master; file "./thecryptorium.com"; }; zone "monku.org"{ type master; file "./monku.org"; }; zone "thedames.com"{ type master; file "thedames.com"; }; zone "gravelymanor.com"{ type master; file "./gravelymanor.com"; }; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ; File vmfaq.com ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ; $ORIGIN vmfaq.com ; @ = vmfaq.com ; @ 86400 IN SOA ns1.vmfaq.com. dnsadmin.vmfaq.com. ( 200403070 ; Serial number 10800 ; Refresh after 3 hours 3600 ; Retry after 1 hour 604800 ; Expire after 1 week 86400 ) ; Minimum TTL of 1 day 86400 IN NS ns1.vmfaq.com. 86400 IN NS ns1.thoene.net. vmfaq.com. 86400 IN A 209.75.97.2 86400 IN MX 0 mx1.veriomail.com. www 86400 IN A 209.75.97.2 bender 86400 IN A 209.75.97.2 ns1 86400 IN A 209.75.97.2 fonts 86400 IN A 209.75.97.2 I found one place that said that I needed to put a $TTL 1D at the top of my zones files. I've tried that, no luck.. Plus, the zone checker utility says all my zones are ok. Besides my zone files having their permissions wide open, so does the actual named directory.. If anyone has some suggestions, I'd love to hear them. I've never had this kind of problem with DNS before. I've been doing it for quite a while and the thing I love about bind is that it always just works. (Except today.) Thanks!!!!