Setting up own DNS

[Joseph S D Yao]

On Wed, Apr 24, 2002 at 06:03:16PM -0700, Bill Manning wrote:
> RH does ship with a couple of usable config files.
> 
> 	root.cache
> 	localhost.zone.
> 	0.0.127.in-addr.arpa.
> 
> with goofy redhat names... :)

I've just walked through setting up DNS on RH 7.1 [i think], with an
admin who is used to the Unix way but really wanted to do it the GUI
way.  OK.  Gnomeprint -> Programs -> System -> bindconf [or just say
'bindconf'].  You can do all the things you need for a simple zone
file.  The files are named domain.name.zone instead of
zone.domain.name, but who cares?  The SOA "name server" field must be a
full name ending in '.', but NS, MX, CNAME, and similar records may be
short names.  I saw no obvious noodges to make sure that NS and MX
records are added, or to enforce any more correctness.  Only NS, MX, A,
SOA, and CNAME records are allowed.

This will notify a running 'named', but apprently not start it up.
Since the admin didn't have 'linuxconf' [?], I had him do:
	chkconfig --level 235 named
	cd /; /etc/init.d/named start
[Yes, I know that 'cd /' may be one of my superstitious rituals; we all
have them.]
[Yes, I know that 'chkconfig --level 235 named on' is documented to
start it; it didn't, so I omitted it here.]

This is obviously of limited applicability to non-RH users, but it may
help some of those.

-- 
Joe Yao				jsdy at center.osis.gov - Joseph S. D. Yao
OSIS Center Systems Support					EMT-B
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