Setting up DNS

This page explains the basics on how to get your nameserver up and going. It will not get too deep into the "whys" since there are a number of other sources for that information. I have also used the FONT COLOR=whatever tag quite often, so these pages will look better with a more recent version of Netscape or whatever else can display that tag.

Assumptions...

This page assumes you are using a Unixish operating system, but will probably be useful for NT & Mac admins as well. It also assumes that you have the BIND (named) binary installed on your machine.

We'll use the following domain and IP addresses as an example:

Domain name: mydomain.com
Class C:     192.168.222.0
Router:      192.168.222.1 is  marbella.mydomain.com and   gw.mydomain.com
Web Server:  192.168.222.2 is   sevilla.mydomain.com and  www.mydomain.com
Mail Server: 192.168.222.3 is    madrid.mydomain.com and mail.mydomain.com
FTP Server:  192.168.222.4 is tarragona.mydomain.com and  ftp.mydomain.com

The web server will also be the primary name server and the mail server will do secondary. Just substitute your domain name for mydomain.com and your class C for 192.168.222.*.

Color scheme:
1.: these are line numbers that need to be deleted in the actual files.
mydomain.com: things in blue are items that need to be changed to suit your particular setup.

Files needed on primary nameserver

Change db.mydomain.com to db.[whatever your domain is] and db.192.168.222 to db.[whatever your class C is].

/etc/resolv.conf
/var/named/db.cache
/var/named/db.127.0.0
/etc/named.boot
/var/named/db.mydomain.com
/var/named/db.192.168.222

Files needed on secondary nameserver

/etc/resolv.conf
/var/named/db.cache
/var/named/db.127.0.0
/etc/named.boot (secondary)

Note that the locations and names of these files can vary quite a bit, but this naming scheme will work fine.

Text files of examples used here
Common Mistakes
Other sources of info

I'm sorry this page is so ugly...

I also have the whole page tarred and gzipped for handy dandy off-line viewing.

Copyleft 1997 Jeff Moe
This is a new page, so please send comments/suggestions to: jeffdns@verinet.com

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