How to control own domain/zonefile ?

[Clenna Lumina]

--- W Howard <whoward at ualberta.ca> wrote:

> In article <egtq7o$pm9$1 at sf1.isc.org> you write:
> >
> > Ok, say I register foo.com, and I have my own linux 
> > box with bind installed, and I want to use that to 
> > control my own domain, instead of using zoneedit.com 
> > or whatever DNS applet a registrar might provide. In 
> > other words, I can setup a zonefile easily enough, 
> > but that only works so long as one manually points 
> > nslookup or dig to said linux box.
> >
> > How do I make it world accessible, so to speak?
> 
> You have it delegated to you by your parent zone putting 
> NS records for your zone in their zone file. They may 
> also need to put glue A records in, if your nameservers 
> are in your zone.
> 
> > I know I can change the name servers for the domain 
> > via the registrar control panel?
> 
> The "registrar control panel"?  Every registrar is 
> supposed to provide a mechanism for allowing registrants 
> to specify or change the names and addresses of their 
> nameservers. 

> Whether this is a web form, web applet, "control panel", 
> or email address is up to the registrar. All it does is 
> allow you tell the registrar what you want for the 
> nameserver records. The registrar itself must get the 
> data into its (or the TLD name server's) zonefile.
> 
> > Is this all there is to it? I get the feeling there 
> > is more. And what if the registrar doesn't have such 
> > an applet?
> 
> The registrar is required to provide some mechanism to 
> their customers for setting and changing the nameserver 
> records.  I suppose that many of them use a web applet 
> for this, but that's not the only possibility.
>
> The nameserver records define the delegation, so, yes, 
> that is all there is to it.
> 
> > P.S.
> > I doubt this is possible, but is there any way to 
> > manually "register" a domain myself without going 
> > through one of those registrars?
> 
> No.  The nameserver records must be maintained by 
> somebody, and that somebody is the registrar.
> 
> > I mean, most cost only $10 USD, which makes me 
> > think that it doesn't really cost them anything, 
> > thus making profit on all those $10 registrations.
> 
> Well, they must maintain their website or equivalent, 
> and pay for the bandwidth to it.  Copying the 
> nameserver information from the web app to the 
> zonefile should be less that $10 worth of work, but 
> it's more than $0.  Somewhere along the way, they have 
> to check for duplicates and do various other 
> administrative checks.
> 
> > Basically, eliminate the middle man. I mean, how 
> > EXACTLY does a registrar register the domain you 
> > pick via their website?
> 
> The middleman maintains part of the data that the 
> rest of the world needs to find your domain.  You 
> can only eliminate him by becoming a registrar 
> yourself.  It ain't cheap.
> 
> > I also want to be able to control reverse dns 
> > (PTR records) which normally one cannot when using 
> > a registrar.
> 
> That depends on the registrar.  You are talking about 
> part of the in-addr.arpa domain rather than part of 
> the com domain, and it may have been delegated to 
> a different registrar.
> 
> > I know there are "ROOT" name servers out there 
> > that control all the TLDs, and so I figure there 
> > must be a way to directly register a domain in 
> > the area before the TLDs, or how ever the registrars 
> > do >it.
> 
> The registrars exchange information with the TLD name
> servers (not with the root name servers, which only 
> delegate com (and org and edu and net and gov and mil 
> and ... ) to the TLD name servers. It's an important 
> distinction.  The root name servers delegate about 
> 400 domains, mostly country codes.  The TLD name 
> server for com delegates a couple of million domains. 
>
> The TLD name servers do not want to deal with a 
> couple of million customers directly (remember that
> some of the alleged customers are criminals trying 
> to steal other people's domains) so they deal with 
> a much smaller number of registrars.
> 
> > Sorry, I know, I'm asking a lot of questions, but 
> > after doing a lot of searching, I can't really 
> > find much clarity on the matter, and maybe
> > someone can really clear this all up for me I hope.
> 
> You can see the delegations for yourself if you use
>   dig +trace some.example.domain
> Some of the registrars are also in the business of 
> running TLD name servers, but they are supposed to 
> keep those business functions separated from each other.
> 
> >>Walt
> 

Walt, thansk you very much, the last part alone - with 
the dig command - opened my eyes as to how it makes it's 
way down the chain of servers, right from the top.

Many thanks.

If I may ask just one more question, how exactly would 
I set up bind so I can:


1) handle mydomain.com (as I mentioned in my 
   original post.) I can easily set the 
   name server entry in my registrars DNS applet.


2) handle local.mydomain.com, as a sub domain of 
   sorts thats only valid on the local LAN that 
   my linux server is a part of; only computers 
   on this LAN are assigned local.mydomain.com. 
   The dhcpd that comes with linux make it easy 
   to set that for clients.

   IE:
      foo.local.mydomain.com => client host 'foo' 
      bar.local.mydomain.com => client host 'bar' 
      ...

   Also local.mydomain.com is NOT to be 
   accessible from the internet.. LAN only.


3) And finally, I want my bind to also foward 
   outside-destined requests to our ISP's DNS 
   server(s), that way the clients can use the 
   Linux's ip for DNS for everything.


I read many groups and documents and some named.conf 
and zone files examples but I was never able to figure 
out how to do all 3 things and do them on one server.

I also want to be able to keep the mydomain.com zone 
file seperate from the local.mydomain.com zone file, 
as the latter is for the LAN only and need not be 
accessible from the internet.

I could use all the help I can get with this, as this 
is one of the very few things I haven't been able to 
lick in the wonderful world that is Linux.

I don't even know what I want to accomplish is even 
possible but bind seems quite powerful and I'm sure 
with some good guidance I should be able to start 
flying on my own :-)




 
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