named eats 100% CPU - can I shut it down?
 

I have an ISPconfig 3 install on CentOS 6.2 set up according to The Perfect Server guide. Now sometimes (once or twice a month) named goes crazy and starts eating 100% of CPU and the performace of machine drops down. I have to restart the named service and all is OK for a while.

I'm using this machine as a WWW and mail server only, it doesn't act as a DNS server. Is it safe to turn named off completely? Is it used for DNS server only? Or also to resolve the addresses of outbound requests?

You can shutdown bind. Ensure that you have valid external nameservers in /etc/resolv.conf to resolve external addresses.

Thank you for an answer, I'll do it this way. Should I also switch is off somehow in ISPconfig? Will ISPconfig start Bind again when I reboot the machine or something like that?

You can unchack the checkbox for dns under System > Server services.

No.