Where and what is /var/run/named?

    # service named start
    Starting name server BIND checkproc: Can not stat /var/run/named/named.pid: Too many levels of symbolic links
    - Warning: /var/run/named/named.pid exists! start_daemon: Can not stat /var/run/named/named.pid: Too many levels of symbolic links                                                          done

Eh? Somehow I messed up wherever /var/run/named is supposed to be. This happened when changing a root-jail DNS server to a non-jailed server. After toggling the NAMED_RUN_CHROOTED value to no in /etc/sysconfig/named starting named complains about this [this named is meant to integrate with Samba4]. Seems strange. Once you try to restart named after this change /var/run/named is automatically created as a directory - but it doesn't work. This fix is to stop named and create the correct symbolic link:

    ln -s /var/lib/named/var/run/named /var/run/named

Not sure how this situation happens; but now the fix/gotcha is here for the search engines to crawl.