Migration from NT to BSD/BIND Help?

[Doug Barton]

Jimbob wrote:
> 
> I work for a small ISP and we are gradually replacing our Windows NT 4
> servers with FreeBSD / Linux.

	Yay. :)

> We currently use Windows NT for our primary
> and secondary DNS, and I want to move the primary server (to start with)
> over to BIND.  I'm not very experienced BIND (I guess I'm too used to
> point-and-click setting up of domains in Windows NT) and while we plan to do
> the administration of zones using Webmin, first I need to move all our
> existing zones to the new server.  Does anyone have any tips on an automated
> way to do this, or can point me to a tutorial on the web?

	Run, do not walk to your nearest tech book seller and purchase the 4th
edition of "DNS and BIND" by Albitz/Liu. 

> I've initially tried to set up the new server as a slave to the existing
> primary,

	That's a good way to get familiar with the operation of the server, and
transfer your zone files. There is no automated way to transfer the config
for the server itself though, that has to be set up manually.

> and i've tried manually setting up some domains as slave zones, but
> so far it doesn't seem to be transfering/updating the records 

	Send us the config file and include just one of the zones you're trying to
slave. Perhaps the NT-familiar folk can also let you know if there is a
setting to twiddle. on the master as well. 

> (note that
> I've pretty much been using Webmin for the BIND administration, rather than
> editing config files.)

	Blah. Tools like webmin can be useful once you have some familiarity with
the guts of the things, but they are a poor substitute for first hand
knowledge. 

Good luck,

Doug