Responsible Person E-mail Address
The email address of the person responsible for managing DNS, followed by a period (if the address is in this zone, you can enter just the username, such as jessica ). Ideally, this address should not be inside the zone that you're defining because people may want to use this address to reach you to tell you that something is wrong with the domainand that same problem may prevent mail from reaching you.
Zone Modification Serial Number
Any number can be used here, but it must be increased every time this zone's DNS information is updated. Most sites use one of these two approaches:
A straight serial number, initially set to 1 , incremented by one each time the zone information is changed. This graphical configuration tool will automatically increment this serial number when required.
The date and a sequence number in YYYYMMDDSS format, where YYYYMMDD is the year/month/day and SS is the sequence number of changes made on that date. For example, 2009021702 indicates the second change made on February 17, 2009. If you're going to use this format, you'll have to remember to update the serial number whenever you make a change.
Zone File Path
The name of the file that will store information for this zone. Use the default value for this field.
Click OK to save this information. You will see the domain listed in the main window, as in Figure 7-10 ; click on the arrow to the left of the domain name to see the entries within that domain.
Figure 7-10. A new zone entry in the main configuration window
Note that two entries have been created: a Start of Authority (SOA) record, which contains basic information about the domain, plus an NS record, which contains information about the authoritative nameserver for the zone.
You'll now need to add resource records (RR) for the machines in this zone. Most domains need four types of records:
A
Defines the address for a hostname. Every host in the zone needs an A record; the next three record types are used in addition to an A record.
CNAME
Enables the use of nicknames for hosts. These records translate a host nickname into a canonical name (true hostname).
MX
Defines a mail exchanger ( SMTP server) within the domain.
NS
Identifies a nameserver for the zone.
To add these records, highlight the new zone you've created, click the Add button, and select the record type from the drop-down list that appears. One of the four windows shown in Figure 7-11 will appear, according to the type of resource record you are adding.
Figure 7-11. Resource record windows
For an A record, insert the hostname in the Domain Name field and the IP address in the IPv4 Address field.
For a CNAME record, insert the nickname in the Domain Name field and the full name of the host in the Canonical Name field.
For an NS record, insert the hostname of the nameserver in the Server Domain Name field.
For an MX record, leave the Domain Name as it is written. If you have more than one mail exchanger for your domain (perhaps a master and a backup email server), enter a priority for each server; lower numbers take precedence over higher numbers. Enter the hostname of the mail server in the Mail Server Name field.
Make sure that an A record exists for each hostname mentioned in CNAME, NS, and MX records.
These hosts don't have to be in the same zone or domain; for example, it's possible for email and name service to be handled by a host outside that domain. In that case, the A record will not appear in this zone but must appear in the zone for that domain.
For example, if the mail server for fedorabook.com was global.proximity.on.ca, then the MX record could point to that host. There would be no A record for global.proximity.on.ca within the fedorabook.com zone, but there would have to be one within the proximity.on.ca zone (which might be on a different nameserver altogether).
Once you have entered all of the resource records you want, click Save to save the information. If named is already running, it will be reloaded so that the changes take effect immediately.
7.3.1.2. Configuring named through configuration files and datafiles
named can also be configured by directly editing the configuration files and datafiles, which is the approach used by many experienced users.
The overall operation of named is controlled by the file /etc/named.conf . This is the default configuration installed by the BIND package:
//
// named.conf for Red Hat caching-nameserver
//
options {
directory "/var/named";
dump-file "/var/named/data/cache_dump.db";
statistics-file "/var/named/data/named_stats.txt";
/*
* If there is a firewall between you and nameservers you want to talk to, you might need to uncomment the query-source
* directive below. Previous versions of BIND always asked questions using port 53, but BIND 8.1 uses an unprivileged port by default.
*/
// query-source address * port 53;
};
//
// a caching-only nameserver config
//
controls {
inet 127.0.0.1 allow { localhost; } keys { rndckey; };
};
zone "." IN {
type hint;
file "named.ca";
};
zone "localdomain" IN {
type master;
file "localdomain.zone";
allow-update { none; };
};
zone "localhost" IN {
type master;
file "localhost.zone";
allow-update { none; };
};
zone "0.0.127.in-addr.arpa" IN {
type master;
file "named.local";
allow-update { none; };
};
zone "0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.ip6.arpa" IN {
type master;
file "named.ip6.local";
allow-update { none; };
};
zone "255.in-addr.arpa" IN {
type master;
file "named.broadcast";
allow-update { none; };
};
zone "0.in-addr.arpa" IN {