Quoting Michael Paoli (Michael.Paoli@cal.berkeley.edu):
"She's dead, Jim." - Rick Moen (Thanks Rick!) noticed some issues, checked a bit and ... named was no longer running! 8-O
I figure it's always nice if your secondary DNS person is your wingman. ;->
My secret weapon: A well-tuned instance of logcheck. The trick to running logcheck is to spend some time iteratively 'tuning' its /etc/logcheck/ignore.d.server/local.rules file, to make it cease reporting routine system events of no interest being reported in the system logs. Eventually, you get to the point where logcheck sends you e-mail only when something _interesting_ and potentially significant happens -- like when your nameserver ceases to be able to pull down zone transfers from a remote master nameserver.
And that is also why I collect means of out-of-band contact for all the people I do DNS for, or who DNS for me, and include those as comment lines where appropriate in /etc/bind/named.conf.local.
(I include that file for public download as a teaching example in http://linuxmafia.com/pub/linux/network/bind9-examples-linuxmafia.tar.gz , except with telephone numbers redacted.)
Incidentally, you and I should both transition from BIND9 to a better authoritative-only nameserver (such as NSD) and from Apache http to a lighter and more secure httpd (such as Lighty or nginx).