EPEL NSD RPM and the missing PID file directory

NSD is a fantastic authoritative nameserver from NLnet Labs which was developed in conjunction with the RIPE NCC to be a highly scalable, secure authoritative nameserver which has no recursive features by design. In fact, it is such as good nameserver that it is used on three of the root namesevers (k.root-servers.net, h.root-servers.net and l.root-servers.net).

Thanks to the EPEL project run by the Fedora guys, you can quickly and easily install an up to date copy of NSD on CentOS/RHEL systems. The only problem that I have found so far is that the RPM doesn’t seem to create directory for the PID file specified in the /etc/nsd/nsd.conf and so the daemon won’t start out of the box.

Obviously it is easy enough to create the /var/run/nsd directory with mkdir, but remember to chown/chgrp this directory to the nsd user and group, otherwise and “nsdc restart” will fail with errors in /var/log/messages along the lines of “failed to unlink pidfile /var/run/nsd/nsd.pid: Permission denied“