Symptom:

You want to back up your Men & Mice configuration data, or you have already backed up your data and need to restore it from backup.

Solution

DNS Server Controller

The configuration starts with a file usually called named.conf. It’s usually located in one of the following:

/etc/named.conf
/etc/namedb/named.conf
/var/chroot/named/etc/named.conf
/etc/rndc.key
/etc/rndc.conf
/etc/namedb/rndc.key
/etc/namedb/rndc.conf
/var/chroot/named/etc/rndc.key
/var/chroot/named/etc/rndc.conf

All data other than named.conf is stored in a data directory. The location of this directory is installation-specific, but it’s usually one of the following:

/var/named
/var/lib/named
/etc/namedb
/var/chroot/named/var/named

The location of the data directory is indicated in named.conf - this file includes five files in the conf subdirectory of this data directory.

Backing Up

If you have any dynamic zones, be sure to either stop named or freeze all dynamic zones before backing up data. Be sure to back up both named.conf the data directory.

Restoring

Restore the same data that was backed up. You can move the data either into or out of a chroot jail, but otherwise the data must be restored to the same locations relative to the file system root. (It’s possible to change these locations with expert knowledge.)

Be sure to restart both named and the Men & Mice DNS Server Controller (if installed) after restoring data. You can install the Men & Mice DNS Server Controller either before or after restoring the data.

Men & Mice Central

If you have the Enterprise Edition of the Men & Mice Suite, you can back up the Men & Mice Central data tables using the command line interface. Launch the Men & Mice CLI (a shell command called mmcmd in version 5.5 and above, qdnscmd in earlier versions - if you don’t have it, you can download it from our FTP server). Execute the following commands within the command line shell:

login server administrator password
backup /some/path
exit

Otherwise, you’ll have to back up the data using the instructions below.

When backing up and restoring the data of Men & Mice Central (except for backing up via the command line interface), be sure to stop the service beforehand. Otherwise, the data tables will be corrupted.

To back up or restore the data directory, you’ll need to locate the data directory. To find it, examine the init script mmcentral (qdnsc in 5.1). Look near the top for the definition of the CHROOTDIR variable. If the variable is not set, the default location is /var/mmsuite/mmcentral in 5.5 and above.

To stop or start the Men & Mice Central service, pass an argument of either stop or start to the init script. Be sure to stop the service before backing up or restoring the data.