What version of Windows is this running on?


Thanks,
Brian Desmond
br...@briandesmond.com<mailto:br...@briandesmond.com>

c - 312.731.3132

From: Michael B. Smith [mailto:mich...@smithcons.com]
Sent: Tuesday, March 09, 2010 1:44 PM
To: NT System Admin Issues
Subject: RE: DNS Server service shuts down shortly after the DC boots

Oh! Yes, now that you say that....

I bet what's happening is that it's timing out.

There is a flag (and I'm sorry that I don't remember the details) that says "do 
the initial zone load in the background". You probably need to set that. That 
should be enough to biggle with...

Regards,

Michael B. Smith
Consultant and Exchange MVP
http://TheEssentialExchange.com

From: Carl Houseman [mailto:c.house...@gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, March 09, 2010 2:40 PM
To: NT System Admin Issues
Subject: RE: DNS Server service shuts down shortly after the DC boots

"Debug logging" will log DNS packets to a text file.  I guess the last DNS 
packet received before the shutdown could tell me something if it was shutting 
down randomly at any time.   But the fact that the service stays running 
forever after restarting suggests that bad DNS packets on the wire aren't 
likely causing this.  So if bad DNS traffic is the problem, the only 
explanation would be a DNS query from the DC to itself.   DC DOS's its own DNS 
server service?

One thing I may have that is less common is a lot of DNS authoritative zones 
for well known bad (malware hosting) domain names.  There's over 1000 of 'em.

I have to say I'm not up for an extended debugging journey on this one, just 
wondering if this behavior triggered any memories for anyone.

Carl

From: Brian Desmond [mailto:br...@briandesmond.com]
Sent: Tuesday, March 09, 2010 1:53 PM
To: NT System Admin Issues
Subject: RE: DNS Server service shuts down shortly after the DC boots

It should be able to kick out more info to a text file.

The scenario you mention of branch DCs not having connectivity is completely 
normal.

Thanks,
Brian Desmond
br...@briandesmond.com<mailto:br...@briandesmond.com>

c - 312.731.3132

From: Carl Houseman [mailto:c.house...@gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, March 09, 2010 12:46 PM
To: NT System Admin Issues
Subject: RE: DNS Server service shuts down shortly after the DC boots

Good idea, but the DNS Server's event logging option has been on "all events" 
all this time.  That must be the default, I don't recall ever changing it.

Carl

From: Michael B. Smith [mailto:mich...@smithcons.com]
Sent: Tuesday, March 09, 2010 1:39 PM
To: NT System Admin Issues
Subject: RE: DNS Server service shuts down shortly after the DC boots

This would seem to indicate to me that while the DNS Server service was 
initiated, it never actually finished initializing.

Aren't there some logging options on the DNS server property tab? I'd probably 
ratchet those up to max for a while and see if they helped gather more info...

Regards,

Michael B. Smith
Consultant and Exchange MVP
http://TheEssentialExchange.com

From: Carl Houseman [mailto:c.house...@gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, March 09, 2010 1:22 PM
To: NT System Admin Issues
Subject: DNS Server service shuts down shortly after the DC boots

Curious thing, started a few months ago after I moved the FSMO roles from this 
DC to another one.  This DC frequently boots "in a vacuum" - no other DC's can 
be contacted, so it takes a long time sniffing around before it finally starts 
Active Directory and its own DNS Server service.   A few minutes after that, 
the DNS Server service shuts down.  There's nothing in the System or 
Application event log to explain it, and the DNS Server event log records 
simply that " The DNS server has shutdown." (event ID 3).

The recovery options are set to restart the service, but that doesn't happen 
because the service appears to have been shut down on purpose.  But no human 
(for sure) and 99.9% sure no software is issuing the command.

Another interesting thing from the event logs, under System, when I start the 
service there's an event 7036 logged "The DNS Server has entered the running 
state".  But I see NO event 7036 for DNS at the time of booting.  Obviously, it 
must be started, else the DNS event log wouldn't record that it had shut down!  
 And I see no 7036 events for it stopping either.

When this happens, I can manually start the DNS Server service and all is well 
until the next boot, which may or may not have the problem.  I think it's 
happening about 50% of the time.

I've scripted a solution to recover from the problem, but I'm just curious if 
anyone has noticed something similar.  I'm guessing the instances of branch 
offices booting their DC without network connectivity back to the FSMO holder 
at HQ is fairly rare, but not unheard of.

And this is Windows 2003 SP2, native 2003 domain/forest.  Almost left that off, 
yikes!

TIA,
Carl

























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