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Some notes about bind and DNS

Just a few notes about setting up your own DNS server and how to not send yourself mad in the process. It's actually not that hard - it's just a little scary because you can lose your presence on the internet if you muck up!

This is my bind dns data or db file. It's here as a primitive form of backup - but it is also here because it's an ok example of a basic domain configuration.

; BIND data file for gingercatsoftware.com
$TTL 604800
gingercatsoftware.com. IN SOA ns1.gingercatsoftware.com. steve.gingercatsoftware.com. (
2009051501 ; Serial
31600 ; Refresh
31600 ; Retry
31600 ; Expire
60480 ) ; Negative Cache TTL
;
gingercatsoftware.com. IN NS ns1.gingercatsoftware.com.
gingercatsoftware.com. IN MX 10 mail.gingercatsoftware.com.

IN A 1.1.1.1
www IN A 1.1.1.1
mail IN A 1.1.1.1
ns1 IN A 1.1.1.1

If you do make any changes remember to up date the serial number. To generate most of it just run the command

date "+%Y%m%d" which will produce 20090515

and then the manual part of the task is adding 2 digits on the end for config revisions (of that day)
Thus

2009051501

this is the defacto way of managing dns SOA. Also do not forget to re start bind.

sudo /etc/init.d/bind9 restart

Then check using dig or nslookkup

dig gingercatsoftware.com

I might also note that this cryptic thing

IN A 1.1.1.1

Is in fact an A record for gingercatsoftware.com It's sort of like a dns version of a silent "H" or "J" but it means - gingercatsoftware.com without any prefix! So there you go I hope this helps!

Steve




© 2006 Steve Abrahall