[lug] DNS and a thanks for the DSL info.

[Sean Reifschneider]

On Sun, Aug 27, 2000 at 01:28:02AM -0400, John Starkey wrote:
>Ok, now here's where I really get confused. Mostly due to lack of
>experience, and adequate time off :} Or at least that's what I'd like to

DNS is subtle and quick to anger.

>This week I will obtain 5 working IP@'s from, yes, an ISP. :}

If you want to deal with reverse on those addresses, you'll have to spend
a lot of time on the phone with US West.  Last time I called with such a
change, it took nearly an hour before I was actually able to speak with
somone who had a clue about reverse DNS.  You couldn't have any worse
luck mailing hostmaster at uswest.net, but I don't know what the official
story on getting those sorts of changes made is...

>What is the least I have to have for BIND to happen? I need resolv.conf to

resolv.conf is for the DNS resolver, not the DNS server.  Whenever you do
a lookup, you use the resolver.  The DNS server is for port 53 requests
from remote and local hosts (for example, another host asking your host
to look up a name).  The resolver is always there, even if you don't
have BIND installed...

You will probably WANT to set up the resolver to point at your local BIND
server:

	search example.com
	nameserver 127.0.0.1

Then in /etc/named.conf you want:

	zone "example.com" { type master; file "db.example.com"; };

Now create /var/named/db.example.com:

	$TTL            1d
	@       IN      SOA     ns1 hostmaster (
						 2000082700 ; Serial number yyyymmddnn
						 30m   ; Refresh
						 15m    ; Retry
						 1w  ; expire
						 1d ) ; Minimum TTL

				IN     NS      ns2.example.com.
				IN     NS      ns1.example.com.

											  IN A 10.9.8.7
	www                             IN A 10.9.8.7

	ftp        IN CNAME www

Then restart the name server:

	killall -HUP named

Now look in /var/log/messages to make sure there aren't any errors:

	guin:named# tail /var/log/messages
	[...]
	Aug 27 00:10:49 guin named[14366]: reloading nameserver
	Aug 27 00:10:50 guin named[14366]: master zone "example.com" (IN) loaded
	(serial 2000082700)
	Aug 27 00:10:50 guin named[14366]: Forwarding source address is
	[0.0.0.0].1223
	Aug 27 00:10:50 guin named[14366]: Ready to answer queries.
	guin:named#

Looks cool.  So, let's run some tests:

	[2] guin:named# host example.com
	example.com has address 10.9.8.7
	[2] guin:named# host -t mx example.com   #  we didn't set up MX
	[2] guin:named# host www.example.com
	www.example.com has address 10.9.8.7
	[2] guin:named# host ftp.example.com
	ftp.example.com is a nickname for www.example.com
	www.example.com has address 10.9.8.7
	[2] guin:named# 

As an experiment, you can set up records for "example.com" just as I did
above (example.com is allocated for use as an example).

I don't know why your setup wasn't working, but my first guess is: Did you
actually use "serial" in the SOA record, or did you put a real number in
those fields?  It should look something like my SOA above.

Sean
-- 
 Home is where your source is.  -- Sean Reifschneider, 1999
Sean Reifschneider, Inimitably Superfluous <jafo at tummy.com>
tummy.com - Linux Consulting since 1995. Qmail, KRUD, Firewalls, Python