dns configure problem

[Barry Margolin]

In article <c=US%a=_%p=Predict-DLI%l=VALIANT-990908152943Z-61 at valiant.predict-dli.com>,
Thomas J. Rude <tjrude at predict-dli.com> wrote:
>I have a couple of quick questions first:
>	1)  where should an MX record point to (A, CNAME)?   I ask because in
>our old setup, which works correctly, the MX record points to a CNAME,
>however, I have heard that it should point to an A record.

MX and NS records are supposed to point to A records.  You may find that
they often work when pointing to CNAMEs, but you should not depend on this
being reliable.

>	2)  can you not have more than one CNAME record per zone?  (or, is that
>a bad idea?  Again, just what I have heard)

You can have as many CNAME records as you want in a zone.  But they all
have to be for different names.  I.e. you can have:

foo1  CNAME  foo-target
foo2  CNAME  foo-target

but you can't have:

foo   CNAME  foo1-target
foo   CNAME  foo2-target

>	3)  Since I am using the same DNS server for internal and external, how
>should I go about setting this up?  I.E, what are the security
>implications of allowing queries and transfers?  ALSO, would I create
>two zones (one for the external IP address and one for the internal IP
>address)?  

Using the same server could be tricky.  You want it to give answers with
internal addresses to internal clients, and external addresses to external
clients.  With BIND 8 you would do this by running multiple named
processes, each with its own zones files that contain the appropriate
addresses, and with configuration files that bind them to the corresponding
interfaces.  I don't know if this can be done with MetaIP.

-- 
Barry Margolin, barmar at bbnplanet.com
GTE Internetworking, Powered by BBN, Burlington, MA
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