[nsd-users] NSD 4 very slow to start up

[Anand Buddhdev]

I've just had to reboot one of my servers running NSD 4. As the system
finished booting and started NSD, I followed the log to see how long it
would take, and this is what I observed:

[1394211696] nsd[6369]: info: setup SSL certificates
[1394211776] nsd[6377]: info: read ae 92 %
[1394212120] nsd[6377]: info: read 246.131.in-addr.arpa. 70 %
[1394212192] nsd[6377]: info: read 177.in-addr.arpa 68 %
[1394212229] nsd[6377]: info: read 179.in-addr.arpa 70 %
[1394212249] nsd[6377]: info: read 250.188.in-addr.arpa. 76 %
[1394212271] nsd[6377]: info: read 200.in-addr.arpa 71 %
[1394212575] nsd[6377]: info: read bg 82 %
[1394212581] nsd[6377]: info: read kz 99 %
[1394212588] nsd[6377]: info: read ma 59 %
[1394212605] nsd[6377]: info: read vn 9 %
[1394212612] nsd[6377]: info: read vn 27 %
[1394212619] nsd[6377]: info: read vn 45 %
[1394212625] nsd[6377]: info: read vn 63 %
[1394212631] nsd[6377]: info: read vn 81 %
[1394212640] nsd[6377]: info: read com.vn 94 %
[1394212641] nsd[6377]: notice: nsd started (NSD 4.0.2), pid 6369

It took NSD 945 seconds to load all the zones and start!! Whoa!!

On my other identical servers, where I have BIND and Knot, BIND starts
in about 60 seconds, and Knot in about 90 seconds. NSD's 945 seconds is
woefully slow in comparison.

Why would NSD 4 be so slow? Could this be the result of random access of
the nsd.db file?

I also notice that NSD is rather stingy with logging at startup. After
the main process started, it took the child server process 80 seconds
before it had logged anything. The next several log entries are also
sort of random and don't give a good idea of progress.

I think this part of NSD 4 could do with some improvement. Ideally, I'd
like NSD 4 to log every zone that it successfully loads in, rather than
emit random log lines with percentages that don't mean much, especially
as those percentages seem to be relative to that specific zone, rather
than the entire nsd.db.

Regards,

Anand