[Sderby] BIND

[Roger Whiteley]

On Sunday 26 September 2004 19:27, Ashley Heath wrote:
> On Sat, 25 Sep 2004 23:49:23 +0100
>
> Mike Hemstock <hemstock at tiscali.co.uk> wrote:
> > Hi folks,
> >
> > I'm trying to setup DNS, but I'm finding it a bit of a BIND.  I have the
> > server managing a domain and that works fine and I have another server
> > managing a subdomain of the aforementioned domain and that also works
> > fine. When both servers need to consult the root servers, this again
> > works fine. However, what I cannot work out how to do is get the
> > domain.com server to consult the sub.domain.com server when it needs to
> > resolve names of the subdomain.  How should I configure BIND to know
> > about the existence of the other server?
> >
> > Regards,
> > Mike.
>
> Correct me if I am wrong (its been a while), but as I understand it a
> single DNS master server is authorative for the whole domain, not just part
> of it. I think you will need to set up one of the servers as master for the
> domain and subdomain. Then add a secondary as backup if the master is
> offline (optional but recommended).
>
> Ash
>
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Mike

One server in a domain is the 'root' server and is 'authoritative', the 
configuration of the BIND data files is such that the BIND instance becomes 
the root server for that domain.  A secondary server can be used to split the 
name lookup load on large networks (typically over 10,000 nodes or where the 
lookup rate is too much for the server on which BIND is running).  The 
secondary server can have its local cache preloaded from local data files or 
can be configured as a caching only name server where lookups are handled by 
the BIND software and initial queries are forwarded on to the authoritative 
name server for the domain in question.  

The configuration options in BIND are er, highly complex, and I strongly 
recommend consulting Albitz  and Liu's book DNS and BIND, ed 4 from O'Reilly, 
if you want a quick configuration look for a Perl script called host2dns,  
this takes a hosts file and creates the half dozen or so config files 
required to make BIND run.  There's a bind mailing list you can subscribe to 
should you be that keen,  alternatively have a look at www.isc.org where you 
might something of interest..

cheers
Roger.