(In my own words), DNS (Domain Name Service) is a global distributed database of IP addresses and domain names and the software to support looking up either one given the other. The "normal" lookup is of a domain name to get the IP address -- when you lookup an IP address to get the domain name it is known as a reverse lookup. The DNS database also contains records useful for email (MX records, and possibly others).

Thinking about my words (above) a little more, I can/should probably make the definition more precise by separately defining some things like:

• Domain Name Service protocol(s?)
• Domain Name Service database
• bind
• resolve(r)

Quoting from the Cooker description of bind-chroot ([Contrib-Rpm] bind-chroot-8.3.3-2mdk; 4 Aug 2002; Oden Eriksson):

BIND (Berkeley Internet Name Domain) is an implementation of the DNS (Domain Name System) protocols. BIND includes a DNS server (named), which resolves host names to IP addresses, and a resolver library (routines for applications to use when interfacing with DNS). A DNS server allows clients to name resources or objects and share the information with other network machines. The named DNS server can be used on workstations as a caching name server, but is generally only needed on one machine for an entire network. Note that the configuration files for making BIND act as a simple caching nameserver are included in the caching-nameserver package.

Install the bind package if you need a DNS server for your network. If you want bind to act a caching name server, you will also need to install the caching-nameserver package.

The bind-chroot packages runs the DNS server daemon under the non-root user and group and in the chroot()ed directory.

See AboutThesePages.

Contents

Notes

Some Types of DNS Records

(and their typical format)

• CNAME
• MX

Setting up a dnscache for the local network, from

Subject: RE: FW: [newbie] setting up a dnscache.
   Date: Wed, 22 May 2002 17:03:22 -0400
   From: zeynalbandari@netscape.net

i hope this can help you . it's a very simple simple cache that i used once and it worked as far as i recall. you can download a file called root.hint from the authoritive organisation in your country , mine is internic.se , and place it in /var/named/

1. install bind9

1. copy the secret from your /etc/rndc.conf an creat named.conf in /etc/

my named.conf is as following. note that 10.0.0.1 should be replaced with your real ip adress.

named.conf:

acl "my_net" {10.0.0.1/;} ;
key "rndc-key" {
        algorithm hmac-md5;
        secret "a_combination_of_letters_and_numbers_u find_in_rndc.conf";
};
options {
        directory "/etc/namedb";        //working directory
        pid-file "named.pid";           //put pid file in working dir
        allow-query { "my_net"; } ;
        } ;
        //root server hints
        zone "." { type hint; file "root.hint";} ;
        //provide a reverse mapping for the loopback adress 127.0.0.1
        zone "0.0.127.in-addr.arpa" {
        type master;
        file "db.127.0.0.1";
        notify no;
        } ;

1. creat db.127.0.0.1 in /var/named/

edit db.127.0.0.1 to make it look like this:

db.127.0.0.1
------------------------; db.127.0.0

$TTL 3h 
@       IN  SOA localhost. root.localhost.  ( 
        2002040600      ;serial
        3h              ;refresh
        1h              ;retry
        1w              ;expire
        1h)             ;minimum

          IN  NS  localhost.
1         IN  PTR localhost. 

1. in console type "service named start"
2. pray to god that i might be right for once

Resources

Recommended by Others

• djbdns Name Server
• djbdns Name Server
• PowerDNS — "fully extensible" - Stephane Bortzmeyer (ca 8 Apr 2003)
• BIND
• NSD — "Very good program, quite recommended. ... You will probably be happy with nsd." - Stephane Bortzmeyer (ca 8 Apr 2003)
• mydns — quoting Thomas Lamy (ca 8 Apr 2003)

As all data is stored in a mysql (or pgsql) backend, it's easy to edit zones/resource records. And it perfectly fits into our web-based administration interface. It's small, fast, and does it's job. Took me 10 minutes to understand and install. I also find the code very readable (one of the things I look at when it comes to mission critical software). Note that mydns is not a caching server, but there are other free packages that do this job.

Then Nate Campi wrote:

How would you use tinydns+dnscache on a machine that has to act as both authoritative and caching server? It has to serve a LAN with dns proxy and serve the private zones that are used on the LAN. The private zones are like ".foo", so dnscache won't know anything about them from the root servers.

Then, from Maurice Lucas:

Setup dnscache on the private LAN ipaddress
Setup tinydns on 127.0.0.1

echo 127.0.0.1 > /etc/dnscache/root/servers/mydomain.foo

and dnscache will ask the local authoritative server about mydomain.foo

Contributors

• RandyKramer - 20 Mar 2002
• <If you edit this page, add your name here, move this to the next line>

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