genuine.com/IN: loading master file genuine.com.zone: file not found
_default/genuine.com/IN: file not found

I always found it silly that no one really talks about this and apparently many like me and even control panels like Plesk were still using hard paths.  I always thought "why can't I just specify the name of the zone file and have bind find it".  Surely the default search path must be /var/named or somewhere else but there is no such thing.

Solution = In /etc/named.conf just edit your "options" clause:

options {
        directory "/var/named";
        /*
         * If there is a firewall between you and nameservers you want
         * to talk to, you might need to uncomment the query-source
         * directive below.  Previous versions of BIND always asked
         * questions using port 53, but BIND 8.1 uses an unprivileged
         * port by default.
         */
        //query-source address * port 53;
        allow-transfer { none };
        allow-recursion {
                localnets;
        };

        auth-nxdomain no;
};

*As an aside "auth-nxdomain no;" makes it so your DNS servers will only return results/DNS lookups for domains/zonefiles it serves.  This way it can't be used to DOS others and also makes it so others can't use your DNS servers.

So the directory "/var/named" is what specifies the default search path for bind zone files.

This way in your /etc/named.conf file you zone file entires can be like this (notice there is no full path):

zone "domain.com" {
        type master;
        file "domain.com.zone";
        allow-transfer {
none;
        };
};


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