Agent cannot detect RNDC key if the -c flag is not used.

There are two related variables: bind9ConfPath and bind9ConfDir. First one stores the full path to the named.conf file, and the second one is the path to a directory containing this file.

There are 4 different methods to detect where the named.conf file is located, executed one-by-one until success.

Unfortunately, the bind9ConfDir value is set before executing method number 3. It means if the named.conf is not detected by methods 1 and 2, the bind9ConfDir is empty.

The bind9ConfDir is used only in one place - to construct the rndc.key path. If it is empty, the resulting path is just rndc.key. It causes Stork looks up the rndc.key in the current working directory.

As a workaround you can:

Run the Bind 9 with the -c flag. This flag accepts the explicit path to the named.conf file. Set the STORK_BIND9_CONFIG environment variable and provide the full path to the named.conf file as a value.