Running

The Knot DNS server part knotd can run either in the foreground or in the background, with the -d option. When run in the foreground, it doesn’t create a PID file. Other than that, there are no differences and you can control it just the same way.

The tool knotc is designed as a front-end for user, making it easier to control running server daemon. If you want to control the daemon directly, use SIGINT to quit the process or SIGHUP to reload configuration.

If you pass neither configuration file (-c parameter) nor configuration database (-C parameter), server will try to use the default configuration file stored in SYSCONFDIR/knot/knot.conf (configured with --with-configdir=path)

Example of server start as a daemon:

$ knotd -d -c knot.conf

Example of server stop:

$ knotc -c knot.conf stop

For a complete list of actions refer to knotd -h and knotc -h or corresponding man pages.

Also, the server needs to create rundir and storage directories in order to run properly.

Configuration database

In the case of a huge configuration file, the configuration can be preloaded into the server`s configuration database:

$ knotc import input.conf

Also the configuration database can be exported into the configuration file:

$ knotc export output.conf

It is recommended to process these operations without server running.

Running a slave server

Running the server as a slave is very straightforward as you usually bootstrap zones over AXFR and thus avoid any manual zone operations. In contrast to AXFR, when the incremental transfer finishes, it stores the differences in the journal file and doesn’t update the zone file immediately but after zonefile-sync period elapses.

Running a master server

If you want to just check the zone files first before starting, you can use knotc checkzone action:

$ knotc -c master.conf checkzone example.com

For an approximate estimate of server’s memory consumption, you can use the knotc memstats action. This action prints count of resource records, percentage of signed records and finally estimation of memory consumption for each zone, unless otherwise specified. Please note that estimated values might differ from the actual consumption. Also, for slave servers with incoming transfers enabled, be aware that the actual memory consumption might be double or more during transfers:

$ knotc -c master.conf memstats example.com

Controlling running daemon

Knot DNS was designed to allow server reconfiguration on-the-fly without interrupting its operation. Thus it is possible to change both configuration and zone files and also add or remove zones without restarting the server. This can be done with the knotc reload action:

$ knotc -c master.conf reload

If you want to enable ixfr differences creation from changes you make to a zone file, enable ixfr-from-differences in the zone configuration and reload your server as seen above. If SOA‘s serial is not changed, no differences will be created.

If you want to refresh the slave zones, you can do this with the knotc refresh action:

$ knotc -c slave.conf refresh

For the zone retransfer, there is also an additional command -f.

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