Unable to start BIND on a Plesk for Linux server: loading from master file failed: file not found / zone not loaded due to errors

Symptoms

The BIND service fails to start with the following error message in service status, output of the command journalctl -u named-chroot or in /var/log/syslog:

CONFIG_TEXT: named-checkconf[18118]: zone example.com/IN: loading from master file example.com failed: file not found
named-checkconf[18118]: zone example.com/IN: not loaded due to errors.
named-checkconf[18118]: _default/example.com/IN: file not found

Cause

Invalid configuration is defined in the BIND configuration file /etc/named.conf.

Resolution

1. Connect to the Plesk server via SSH.

2. Open the file /etc/named.conf in a text editor. In this example, we are using the vi editor:

   # vi /etc/named.conf

3. Make sure the following section is defined properly. If there is no such section, add it at the beginning of the file:

   CONFIG_TEXT: options {
       allow-recursion {
           localnets;
       };
           listen-on-v6 { any; };
       version "none";
       directory "/var";
       auth-nxdomain no;
       pid-file "/var/run/named/named.pid";
   };

4. Save the changes and close the file.

5. Start the service:

   • on CentOS/RHEL-based distributions

     # service named-chroot start

   • on Debian/Ubuntu-based distributions

     # service bind9 start

6. Rebuild DNS zone files:

   # plesk repair dns -y