ubuntu + bind slave = nutty

[Michael Butash]

I'm curious if anyone's seen anything nutty like this before...

So I'm migrating my dns instances between boxes when I noticed my
secondary dns server isn't starting bind anymore.  Primary still works
fine, no issues.  Debugging gets me this error:

user at dns03:~$ sudo named -u bind -t /var/lib/bind -g
26-Aug-2009 21:01:33.568 starting BIND 9.5.0-P2 -u bind -t /var/lib/bind
-g
26-Aug-2009 21:01:33.569 found 1 CPU, using 1 worker thread
26-Aug-2009 21:01:33.575 loading configuration from
'/etc/bind/named.conf'
26-Aug-2009 21:01:33.575 none:0: open: /etc/bind/named.conf: file not
found
26-Aug-2009 21:01:33.587 net.c:80: unexpected error:
26-Aug-2009 21:01:33.587 socket() failed: Permission denied
26-Aug-2009 21:01:33.588 net.c:80: unexpected error:
26-Aug-2009 21:01:33.588 socket() failed: Permission denied
26-Aug-2009 21:01:33.588 loading configuration: file not found
26-Aug-2009 21:01:33.589 exiting (due to fatal error)

After futzing with this for several hours, I give up, clone the primary,
migrate the slave config files, and get it working again.  Happy it's
working, I reboot it, migrate the instance again, and I get the same
damn errors.  I can find _nothing_ related to an error like this
anywhere on google, and even strace-ing it shows me nothing other than
for some awful reason it now doesn't seem to think an ethernet interface
exists.  

Any ideas why a functional slave bind server would "lose" it's
capability of binding to an ethernet interface after a reboot?  As far
as I can tell, this is the only thing that seems to be holding it up.
This is the most frustrating and asinine thing I've seen ubuntu do in a
while, pretty much killing my entire day thus far...

I've checked apparmor, permissions (all files readable fine by user),
named.conf allowing "any" bind interfaces, and again, it was working
perfectly before a reboot.  This is entirely reproducible as well as
apparently I just flipping did.  Ugh.

I do know about djbdns and rdns being "better", I'd just rather not have
to waste a few days when bind has and does always suite my needs just
fine.  

-mb