Can you please write me what version of BIND and RRL patch are you using
(named -v)? I suppose it is the latest one in stable. If so, can you please
try bind-9.9.3 from updates-testing? It includes the latest version of RRL patch
which should have somehow improved logging.

If it won't help I'll discuss this issue with upstream.

Thank you!

Hi

bind-9.9.3-3.P1.fc17.x86_64

i deployed it last week because i am now 3 weeks at vacation
and enabled the rate-control config on sunday night

 rate-limit  
 {
  responses-per-second 5;
  window               10;
 };

I discussed this with the upstream. I assume these errors are not from
syslog, but from BIND own log files. RRL messages about dropped queries
are logged "info" severity level. You can limit the log size by adding
a limit to the channel that receives the query-errors category. Upstream
suggested something like:

category query-errors {
        info-log;
};

channel info-log {
        file "log/info" versions 10 size 10m;
};

Please try to limit your logging channel and let me know if it helps.

(In reply to Tomas Hozza from comment #3)
> category query-errors {
>         info-log;
> };

There should be also "rate-limit" category available.

i give it a try after my vacation. not that trivial to test since the named.conf is genreated from a database-backend.............

however, if you look at my initial post you see *a lot* of identical lines for the same IP within the same second and we are far away froma real amplification attack - i fear if that would happen named is self-DOSed with logging and log-rotating!

one last comment:

the rate-control patch IMHO should not produce more than 3-5 log-lines in the same second, yes you would lose informations but in the c ase for it was written wich is a "DNS amplification attack" you do not want teh full log nor have you time to read it 

maybe it would be possible to buffer these logs in a configurable amount of RAM and write them delayed to the logs like http://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/mod/mod_log_config.html#bufferedlogs and in this case ignoring the exact timestamp and store the one from the moment it is written a line could look like while the "XXX times" would be a interesting value

"09-Jun-2013 04:35:31.825 query-errors: 500 times: client 209.205.76.125 rate limit drop response to 209.205.76.0/24 for ***** IN ANY"

one of my webservers was last year target of a DDOS and hence what is going on in such situations is hardly logable nor can anybody read it

well, i tested this on my homeserver

"category rate-limit" works not as expected

"rate_limit.log" contains only one line while the rest still goes to the genereal log, but however *than you* for the size-option which i did not know in fact after many years of maintain production dns-servers *shame* 

[root@srv-rhsoft:~/named/data]$ cat rate_limit.log
20-Jun-2013 02:09:03.199 rate-limit: limit responses to 127.0.0.0/24 for localhost IN A  (081a4862)
_____________________________________________

-rw-rw---- 1 named named 5,2K 2013-06-20 02:09 named.log
-rw-rw---- 1 named named  100 2013-06-20 02:09 rate_limit.log
_____________________________________________

logging
{
 channel default_log
 {
  file                 "data/named.log" versions 1 size 10m;
  severity             dynamic;
  print-time           yes;
  print-category       yes;
 };
 channel transfer_log
 {
  file                 "data/transfer.log" versions 1 size 10m;
  severity             dynamic;
  print-time           yes;
  print-category       yes;
 };
 channel rate_limit_log
 {
  file                 "data/rate_limit.log" versions 1 size 10m;
  severity             dynamic;
  print-time           yes;
  print-category       yes;
 };
 channel lame_servers_log
 { 
  file                 "data/lame_servers.log" versions 1 size 10m;
  severity             dynamic;
  print-time           yes;
  print-category       yes;
 };
 category default      {default_log;};
 category resolver     {default_log;};
 category security     {default_log;};
 category xfer-in      {transfer_log;};
 category xfer-out     {transfer_log;};
 category config       {default_log;};
 category queries      {default_log;};
 category notify       {default_log;};
 category database     {default_log;};
 category rate-limit   {rate_limit_log;};
 category lame-servers {lame_servers_log;};
};

in fact most of the noise goes to "query-errors" and not "rate-limit"

20-Jun-2013 02:17:17.609 query-errors: client 127.0.0.1#64258 (localhost): rate limit slip response to 127.0.0.0/24 for localhost IN A  (081a4862)
20-Jun-2013 02:17:17.623 query-errors: client 127.0.0.1#20101 (localhost): rate limit drop response to 127.0.0.0/24 for localhost IN A  (081a4862)
20-Jun-2013 02:17:18.677 query-errors: client 127.0.0.1#14696 (localhost): rate limit slip response to 127.0.0.0/24 for localhost IN A  (081a4862)
20-Jun-2013 02:17:18.684 query-errors: client 127.0.0.1#44717 (localhost): rate limit drop response to 127.0.0.0/24 for localhost IN A  (081a4862)
20-Jun-2013 02:17:19.740 query-errors: client 127.0.0.1#25976 (localhost): rate limit slip response to 127.0.0.0/24 for localhost IN A  (081a4862)
20-Jun-2013 02:17:19.754 query-errors: client 127.0.0.1#55496 (localhost): rate limit drop response to 127.0.0.0/24 for localhost IN A  (081a4862)
20-Jun-2013 02:17:20.807 query-errors: client 127.0.0.1#62600 (localhost): rate limit slip response to 127.0.0.0/24 for localhost IN A  (081a4862)
20-Jun-2013 02:17:20.822 query-errors: client 127.0.0.1#57450 (localhost): rate limit drop response to 127.0.0.0/24 for localhost IN A  (081a4862)

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