Setting up dns

I am just now setting up my local dns, just because …. currently I have to access my local server by IP-address which is not quite optimized. I found a (so far) very good dns howto and a list of dns tools.

Debian packages: dnsutils, bind9, bind9-host, nslint (very helpful -> checks syntax of dns files)

Debian helpfuls:

apt-cache search searchword
apt-cache show packagename
dpkg -S filename

One problem with the howto mentionned above: all files have different names on a debian system. So far I added a search and an additional nameserver to my resolv.conf and added a zone file for my domain and a zone in named.conf. On debian all dns config files reside in /etc/bind/ by the way!

What the HOWTO is not mentionning is that you need to resolve both ways, so you need a zone file for your ‘domain’ as well as one for the ip addresses, on debian db.domain and db.192 probably.

After that nslint showed no more errors and I have now a working dns for my linux computers. Of course I am not sure how to integrate all this with dhcp. That’s for later. So far dhcp isn’t working, so it doesn’t matter.

Here’s part of my zone file:

; nameserver record
IN NS zarathustra.delusions.

; alias records
www CNAME @

And here’s the data for the reverse dns:

@ IN NS localhost.

1.0.168.192.in-addr.arpa. IN PTR zarathustra.delusions.
23.0.168.192.in-addr.arpa. IN PTR statosphere.delusions.
42.0.168.192.in-addr.arpa. IN PTR transversalis.delusions.

So far dns seems to be working including the caching of other domains ….