Re: BIND DNS from base vs. pkg

[Steve Rikli <sr%genyosha.net@localhost>]

On Thu, Oct 29, 2026 at 08:20:50PM -0400, Greg Troxel wrote:
> Steve Rikli <sr%genyosha.net@localhost> writes:
> 
> > I'm planning to stand up another NetBSD server for DNS and other network
> > services (NTP, dhcp, tftp, etc.) in the lab, so I thought I'd take a
> > look at the state of things; this is amd64 running fairly recent 11.0
> > and packages:

I have NetBSD VM's in the lab, so I thought I'd be a bit more thorough
in my presentation of status quo as I see it today, after updating:

    uname -r      base named -v                       pkgin search
  10.2_STABLE   9.18.24 (Extended Support Version)   bind-9.18.50nb2
  11.0_STABLE   9.20.24 (Stable Release)             bind-9.18.50nb2
  11.99.9       9.20.29 (Stable Release)             bind-9.18.50nb2

> There is now (not in Q3) a 9.20 package, but it is labeled as missing
> blocklist patches.

I see that now too; the distinfo says it'll use bind-9.20.30.tar.xz to
build, matching the version I run on other servers, which makes it
attractive, but maybe not as much if it's still a wip.

Back in the single-digit NetBSD releases I ran SPARC20's with base BIND,
and istr back then that pkgsrc version tended to trail base as well.

Is there a NetBSD project standard or policy etc. about BIND versioning
in base vs. pkgsrc? Or are they simply separate? I've historically
assumed it's basically best effort for both, with time and resource
constraints permitting.

As an aside, as much as I didn't care for it at the time, these days I
can understand why FreeBSD decided to remove BIND from base and only
ship it in pkg, e.g. from "latest" (vs. "quarterly") pkg repository:

$ uname -sr
FreeBSD 15.1-STABLE
$ pkg search bind9
bind9-devel-9.21.27            BIND DNS suite with updated DNSSEC and DNS64
bind920-9.20.30                BIND DNS suite with updated DNSSEC and DNS64

> Using base seems to me like a good plan.  NetBSD 10 has 9.18 which is
> bind-LTS but obviously 11 is better, with one fewer upgrade over any
> system lifetime.  And it's 9.18.24, which is not 9.18.50.
> 
> I don't see any reason to use 9.18 from pkgsrc on NetBSD 11.

I might go as far as saying I wouldn't use bind-9 pkg today; 9.18 is
pretty old and, as noted downthread, EOL by ISC. That leaves NetBSD 10
somewhat stuck, unfortunately, but I'll be using 11.

I'm not strongly concerned about BIND versions on the NetBSD server I'm
planning, since it's in the lab and not public. Still, it's attractive
to run the recommended ISC versions when possible.

I'm not inclined to build my own from src (outside pkgsrc), so overall I
agree: base BIND today is probably the best bet, with an eye towards
what happens with pkgsrc in future.

Thanks,
sr.