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

[John Starkey]

> DNS is subtle and quick to anger.

I'm not that passionate about it yet. I really am doing this with the
hopes that I can stop relying on my registrar. Register.com is good. But
if I can go with someone cheaper just to get the name then handle things
on this end, I'd eventually like to do that. IF next weekend isn't
adequate time. I think I have the fundamentals down ok. The message I
typed came stricly from memory. Although I don't know everything about
what I'm trying to do, I think mainly because I haven't established a
working model yet. So the possible causes are endless right now. In my
mind. (I think).
 
> 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...

Does this mean I will neeed to rely on them to enter my records?? That's
what I was trying to avoid in the first place. This may be a warped view,
what I wanted to do was have one entry at register.com for backup. Then
make mine the primary.

I think I may be confused about the purpose of reverse. Is it only for
entering IP@ instead of alpha-numeric?? And forward would be for entering
the alpha-numeric and assigning IP@ within??

> 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...

So when I do:


nslookup 

It tells me the localhost addy and the name of the server. But tells me
the server is returning an error. So how do i start the server?? Maybe
this is the /usr/sbin/ndc (the resolver??) and named (the server, based on
the d at the end). I just scrolled down and saw that you state this later,
but ndc??
 
> 	search example.com
> 	nameserver 127.0.0.1

So does the "nameserver 127.0.0.1" have an RR or is this just something
that resolv knows to look for and where?
 
> 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#

This is one I never see. Using "restart" I get the [ok] [ok] but never any
entries in messages.
 
> 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).

So you actually set up these records on your machine?? I'll try them. I've
used three different books and the HOWTO and tried all the simple examples
I could find.
 
> 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.

No, that was just some shorthand. I remembered the entries but not the
numbers.


Thanks,

John