GingerCat Software Some notes about bind and DNS

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Some notes about bind and DNS

Just a few notes about setting up your own DNS server and how to not send yourself mad in the process. It's actually not that hard - it's just a little scary because you can lose your presence on the internet if you muck up!

This is my bind dns data or db file. It's here as a primitive form of backup - but it is also here because it's an ok example of a basic domain configuration.



; BIND data file for gingercatsoftware.com

$TTL	604800

gingercatsoftware.com.	IN	SOA	ns1.gingercatsoftware.com. steve.gingercatsoftware.com. (

		 	2009051501	; Serial

			 31600		; Refresh

			 31600		; Retry

			31600		; Expire

			  60480 )	; Negative Cache TTL

;

gingercatsoftware.com.	IN	NS	ns1.gingercatsoftware.com.

gingercatsoftware.com.	IN	MX	10 mail.gingercatsoftware.com.



	IN	A	1.1.1.1

www     IN      A       1.1.1.1

mail    IN      A       1.1.1.1

ns1     IN      A       1.1.1.1

If you do make any changes remember to up date the serial number. To generate most of it just run the command

date "+%Y%m%d" which will produce 20090515

and then the manual part of the task is adding 2 digits on the end for config revisions (of that day)
Thus

2009051501

this is the defacto way of managing dns SOA. Also do not forget to re start bind.



sudo /etc/init.d/bind9 restart

Then check using dig or nslookkup



dig gingercatsoftware.com

I might also note that this cryptic thing



	IN	A	1.1.1.1

Is in fact an A record for gingercatsoftware.com It's sort of like a dns version of a silent "H" or "J" but it means - gingercatsoftware.com without any prefix! So there you go I hope this helps!

Steve