DNS server crashing, what to do?
 

I have a basic LAMP server, with CPANEL installed, centOS. I am not an admin guy, just a programmer.

But my DNS service keeps crashing, and I need to restart it through cpanel about every 3 days or so.

How do I debug this? Where do I start?

Yikes... maybe go with 3rd party DNS?

First of all cpanel is a resource hog and could be causing issues. Do you really need cpanel? cant you manage the server without it? if not I suggest maybe a better server or use a hosts dns and let the pros handle it.:2 cents::2 cents:

I absolutely agree - sometimes CPanel is more black magic than science.

Have you checked the service logs?

Tried upgrading bind? There's a DoS attack which can cause the server to crash.

I would SSH into your box and recompile BIND from source or use yum, don't bother with cPanel....

Yum is super easy

yum install bind bind-chroot bind-libs bind-utils caching-nameserver

To install from source:

wget ftp://ftp.isc.org/isc/bind9/9.5.2b1/bind-9.5.2b1.tar.gz

tar xvfz bind-9.5.2b1.tar.gz

cd bind...

./configure

make

make install