[lug] DNS/BIND for a home network

[Nate Duehr]

On Thu, 2001-12-06 at 16:06, Elyse Grasso wrote:

> I want to set up a nameserver for my home machines to use talking to each 
> other (the one Win2k box is annoying about acknowledging that the others 
> exist, even with its hosts aand lmhosts files filled in. I'm not sure running 
> DNS will help, but it seems worth trying). The machines are on a 192.168.2.0 
> network. (Work uses 192.168.1.x -- the hosts file on my laptop is .... umm 
> ... odd).

If you have entries in the hosts file and the machine is able to resolve
those names now, adding a DNS server won't help.

> I assume from reading up on BIND that I should make the home machines a 
> subnetwork of my official domain name -- something like 
> home.data-raptors.com. I don't think I want to have the full domain delegated 
> to my home machines until I have a 24/7 broadband connection of some sort: I 
> suspect delegation would complicate my email delivery, (which is mainly what 
> I use data-raptors.com for in the first place).

Many ISP's won't do subdomain delegation, but what you suggest here *is*
possible.  The MX record for your main domain will dictate where your
mail goes, so don't worry about it unless you have them delegate the
whole zone to you -- if you do the whole domain, you'll have to have
something online all the time to answer DNS queries, you're correct.

> Should I ask my ISP to delegate home.data-raptors.com to me somehow, so that 
> my local DNS servers won't get confused when they are connected to the 
> Internet and able to talk to the server that is authoritative for 
> data-raptors.com?

Again, this is possible, but many ISP's refuse to do it.

> Assuming that I set up home.data-raptors.com, is it possible for me to give 
> the machines canonical names like xerxes.data-raptors.com without bothering 
> the ISP to do so?

No, it could be xerxes.home.data-raptors.com, but not
xerxes.data-raptors.com.

> Are there any really good discussions of combining NAT and BIND that someone 
> could point me to? (I just bought DNS and BIND 4th ed, since the 3rd ed 
> didn't cover a lot of the stuff I'm running into... not sure I'm 
> comprehending it yet.)

The NAT thing you mention here out of the blue worries me now.  Running
servers behind NAT is going to be tricky.  We really need more info on
your plan to help you out.  

Depending on what you're trying to do, you might be able to do it, but
remember that you can only have ONE reverse IP address entry in the
reverse DNS for an individual IP address, so your NAT IP name in the
reverse DNS will always show up as a SINGLE machine name.

> At work I have a slightly different problem, since we do intend to run our 
> own mail and web servers once I get things configured, but I will still need 
> to deal with NAT, I think.

You're not going to find this particularly fun to set up, NAT and mail
servers is semi-evil.  Get static IP's and save yourself a lot of grief.

> Thanks for any help, 
> 
> Elyse

Nate the recently unemployed DNS/Linux/Radio/Telco geek... 

Elyse, I'm still not 100% sure of what you're trying to do and/or "fix",
but am willing to help out.  Can we get some more detail of the exact
problem?

Nate, nate at natetech.com