Useful BIND administration tips: The ndc utilitiy (probably in /usr/sbin/) is a handy way to control the upness of your nameserver. As root, try
#/usr/sbin/ndc stats
#/usr/sbin/ndc reload
#/usr/sbin/ndc stop
#/usr/sbin/ndc restart
Sometimes you just have to do a manual zone transfer. The command is:
#/usr/sbin/named-xfer -z zone-domain-name -f filename -s 0 IP-address-of-master
Debugging:
Try $less /var/log/messages | grep named
Attrib: concepts drawn from man pages, reformatted from my own cheat sheet notes.