BIND format

[Bill Larson]

> I am a newbie to BIND8, so please do not throw eggshells at me if I am
> wrong. Is the data format for BIND8 different from BIND4?

The format of the DNS data is identical between BIND4 and BIND8.  This
format is specified in the RFCs and cannot (should not!) change.

Please note that there is at least one new directive available in
BIND-8.  This is the "$TTL" directive to specify the default TTL for a
zone.  Specifying this will avoid a small warning that the default TTL
is being obtained from the SOA record (where the old "minimum TTL" now
defines the negative caching TTL).

> ? Can someone please show me a URL where I can get some documentation?
> www.vix.com does not seem to have a complete documention on this.

Take a look at <http://www.isc.org/products/BIND/docs/index.html>, in
particular look at the Master File Format section for info about the
DNS data format.  The man page for named will also cover this
information.  The DNS Resources Directory at <http://www.dns.net/dnsrd>
also has some very good DNS and BIND information available.

If you are serious about managing a DNS operations, I can't recommend
"DNS and BIND" by Paul Albitz & Cricket Liu, O'Reilly and Assc. enough.
Make sure that you get the third edition which covers BIND-8, the
earlier ones don't.  This is the single most important source of
information about DNS and BIND that is available.

Bill Larson (wllarso at swcp.com)