NDC(8)                  OpenBSD System Manager's Manual                 NDC(8)

NAME
     ndc - name daemon control program

SYNOPSIS
     ndc [-c channel] [-l localsock] [-p pidfile] [-d] [-q] [-s] [-t]
         [command]

DESCRIPTION
     This command allows the system administrator to control the operation of
     a name server.  If no command is given, ndc will prompt for commands un-
     til it reads EOF.

     Options are:

     -c channel  Specifies the rendezvous point for the control channel.  The
                 default is /var/run/ndc (a UNIX domain socket which is also
                 the server's default control channel).  If the desired con-
                 trol channel is a TCP/IP socket, then the format of the
                 channel argument is ipaddr/port (for example, 127.0.0.1/54
                 would be TCP port 54 on the local host.)

     -l localsock
                 This option will bind(2) the client side of the control chan-
                 nel to a specific address.  Servers can be configured to re-
                 ject connections which do not come from specific addresses.
                 The format is the same as for channel (see above).

     -p pidfile  For backward compatibility with older name servers, ndc is
                 able to use UNIX signals for control communications.  This
                 capability is optional in modern name servers and will disap-
                 pear altogether at some future time.  Note that the available
                 command set is narrower when the signal interface is used.  A
                 likely pidfile argument would be something like
                 /var/run/named.pid.

     -d          Turns on debugging output, which is of interest mainly to de-
                 velopers.

     -q          Suppresses prompts and result text.

     -s          Suppresses nonfatal error announcements.

     -t          Turns on protocol and system tracing, useful in installation
                 debugging.

COMMANDS
     Several commands are built into ndc, but the full set of commands sup-
     ported by the name server is dynamic and should be discovered using the
     help command (see below).  Builtin commands are:

     /help       Provides help for builtin commands.

     /exit       Exit from ndc command interpreter.

     /trace      Toggle tracing (see --t description above).

     /debug      Toggle debugging (see -d description above).

     /quiet      Toggle quietude (see -q description above).

     /silent     Toggle silence (see -s description above).

NOTES
     If running in pidfile mode, any arguments to start and restart commands
     are passed to the new named on its command line.  If running in channel
     mode, there is no start command and the restart command just tells the
     name server to execvp(2) itself.

AUTHOR
     Paul Vixie (Internet Software Consortium)

SEE ALSO
     named(8),

4th Berkeley Distribution      December 31, 1998                             2
