Generic Zone File??

[Bill Larson]

Having multiple zones defined with one "generic" file IS possible.
Having zones defined in "named.conf" that looks like:

	zone "foo1.bar" { type master; file "db.generic"; };
	zone "foo2.bar" { type master; file "db.generic"; };
	zone "foo3.bar" { type master; file "db.generic"; };

and a "db.generic" zone file that looks like:

	$TTL 86400;
	@	IN	SOA	ns1.foo.bar. hostmaster.foo.bar. (
				1; serial
				28800; refresh
				14400; retry
				3600000; expire
				1440); ncache TTL
		IN	NS	ns1.foo.bar.
		IN	NS	ns2.foo.bar.
	www	IN	CNAME	www.foo.bar.

then any connection to "www.foo1.bar", "www.foo2.bar", "www.foo3.bar"
will all be sent to the "real" server at "www.foo.bar".

Note that this "www.foo.bar" web server will have to be configured to
act as a virtual server for each of these names - but this is a DNS
list NOT a web server management list.  Read your documentation.

To head off your next question - if you want the ability to connect
as "http://foo.bar", rather than "http://www.foo.bar", you will 
definitely need to add an "A" record for this generic zone, such
as:

		IN	A	10.1.2.3 ; the IP address for www.foo.bar

You cannot use a CNAME for this purpose.

General question relating to this setup:

The RR for "www" could be an "A" record rather than a CNAME.  Is there
any major advantage to using one or the other for this purpose?  Using
a CNAME makes changing the server address easier, but will require two
DNS queries.  Anything else?

Bill Larson

> We have a customer  that has over 10,000 clients using his web site.  They 
> connect to their own sites by using   clientdomain.com/username as the URL.  
> They would like to allow their clients to register their own domain name, 
> using the clients DNS server.  That alone would be pretty easy.  The problem 
> is they don't want to have to generate a seperate zone file for each domain.  
> IE, they want every domain registered to their server to resolve out to their 
> web servers ip. I told them that I didn't  think that it was possible, but 
> that I would put it on the list to make sure.  Does any one know of a way to 
> do this??