DNS Tutorials

Solaris DNS Tutorial

• Solaris DNS Tutorial, part 1/3
• Solaris DNS Tutorial, part 2/3
• Solaris DNS Tutorial, part 3/3
• DNS Lab

DNS HOWTO -- Nicolai Langfeldt [email protected] HOWTO become a totally small time DNS admin.

1. Preamble

• 1.1 Legal stuff
• 1.2 Credits and request for help.
• 1.3 Dedication

2. Introduction.

3. A caching only name server.

• 3.1 Starting named

4. A simple domain.

• 4.1 But first some dry theory
• 4.2 Our own domain
• 4.3 The reverse zone

5. A real domain example

• 5.1 /etc/named.conf (or /var/named/named.conf)
• 5.2 /var/named/root.hints
• 5.3 /var/named/zone/127.0.0
• 5.4 /var/named/zone/land-5.com
• 5.5 /var/named/zone/206.6.177

6. Maintenance

7. Converting from version 4 to version 8

8. Questions and Answers

9. How to become a bigger time DNS admin.

Everything Solaris/DNS for dummies

DNS can be intimidating at first. What files do I modify? What do I put in them? How does it apply to Solaris, specifically? If you're used to another operating system, Solaris, like any new platform - might not be immediately obvious, as there are a few pecularities you should be aware of. This article will discuss DNS related issues under Solaris, using version 7 as the reference platform and the stock Sun version of BIND.

Further down, BIND v9.1.0 will be discussed as an upgrade to the stock version. You should definately consider upgrading this way, as there are several security holes that can compromise root on your box with the stock BIND v8.1.2 that ships with Solaris 7.

A few key terms to understand are needed before we dive in. BIND refers to the software that you will be interacting with. What it does is provide a domain name server (DNS) that translates hostnames into valid (hopefully) IP addresses. When it is running on your system, you will often see a process called named or in.named.

It's really quite simple to get going and keep DNS maintained. We won't be getting too involved in complex DNS setups, but will illustrate all the basics needed to get most jobs done and get you up and running in the least amount of time.

There are several ways to provide a name resolution to your local machine and it's users or to your entire office - or even the Internet in general. Among the possibilities are:

• Local resolution of local machines outside of BIND
• Internal use only name server
• Completely external name resolution
• External name resolution with local caching
• Being the authoritative DNS server for your domain(s)

Depending on these needs determines how you will be setting up DNS and which files are to be modified and maintained. You should decide ahead of time what your needs are, but keep in mind that you can always modify this behavior at a later time quite readily.

Goals for this Article

• Enable DNS for hostname lookups
• Provide external-only name resolution
• Set up a local caching name server
• Set up your own domain name server
• Overriding DNS using /etc/hosts
• Modifying name resolution behavior
• Upgrading to the latest BIND

Name Service and Resolver Configuration discusses named and bind configuration.

From The Network Administrators' Guide by Olaf Kirch/Andrew Anderson.

Setting up a basic DNS server for a domain by Craig Richmond

Good tutorial document, now somewhat out of date. Part of the BIND distribution.

BOG

Dealing with Lame Delegations by Bryan Beecher Describes the lamers tool to detect and flag lame delegations.

 

DNS Demystified by Al Berg Short operational overview.

 

DNS for Internet Administrators by András Salamon Slides for one-day DNS course, from October 1996.

 

The Internet Cookbook: DNS by Robert J. Kohlhepp

Examples of building a DNS, with sample database files; from a series of articles in Network Computing Online, February 1997.
 

Features of BIND 8.2 by Cricket Liu

Summary of new features of BIND 8.2, by the author of the standard cricket book. 14-Jan-2000
 

Hedrick

`Keeping track of names and information: the domain system', Section 5 of Introducti on to the Internet Protocols by Charles L. Hedrick. This is a well-known paper from 1987, made available in HTML by Steven E. Newton.
 

Passive DNS Replication

Describes building partial zone files based on observing the query traffic at a third party name server, by Florian Weimer. 
 

Setting Up Your Own DNS by Gary Kessler

Thorough practical overview.
 

 

Style Guide for Zone Files by Paul Vixie

The recommended style for manually maintained zone files, from the maintainer of BIND. Highly recommended.

Outdated:

A Survey of DNS Tools by Cricket Liu  Outdated

A comparison of nslookup, dig, host, doc, dnswalk, dnsparse and h2n. Slides presented in February 1993.
 

10 DNS Errors That Will Kill Your Network by Bill Boswell

Common DNS errors in Microsoft Windows environments. Many of these problems are not specific to Windows. (checked 07-Sep-2004)
 

Tricks of the BIND Trade by Cricket Liu

Slides presented in February 1993. Some of the material is outdated.
 

Webmonkey's quick overview

Very quick overview of DNS from Webmonkey.
 

What is a domain? by Mark R. Horton

Introductory paper, similar to but easier to read than the fundamental RFCs. Part of the BIND distribution.

http://cramsession.brainbuzz.com/cramsession/microsoft/win2knet_infra/guide.asp

Spitzner, Lance. "DNS Access." 26 January 2000.
URL: http://www.enteract.com/~lspitz/rules/rule6.html (21 July, 2000).

Gray, Damon. "The "IN-ADDR.ARPA" domain and it’s relation to DNS."
URL: http://www.wednet.edu/network/whitepapers/in-addr.arpa.domain-whitepaper.html (23 July, 2000).

• Setting up DNS  by Jeff Moe. This page explains the basics on how to get your nameserver up and going.

  Files needed on primary nameserver (Change db.mydomain.com to db.[whatever your domain is] and db.192.168.222 to db.[whatever your class C is]):

  • /etc/resolv.conf

  • /var/named/db.cache

  • /var/named/db.127.0.0

  • /etc/named.boot

  • /var/named/db.mydomain.com

  • /var/named/db.192.168.222

  Files needed on secondary nameserver

  • /etc/resolv.conf

  • /var/named/db.cache

  • /var/named/db.127.0.0

  • /etc/named.boot (secondary)

  Note that the locations and names of these files can vary quite a bit, but this naming scheme will work fine.

  • Text files of examples used here

  • Common Mistakes

  • Other sources of info

Index of pubdocsunix-tutorials courses

• dns.ps -- PostScript version
• dns.txt -- text version

• Domain Name System (DNS) -- course notes
• FAQ - DNS  -- outdated (1993)
• Setting up a basic DNS Server for a domain -- Revision 1.1.2 Craig Richmond [email protected]
  3rd August 1993 Last modified 960804

• Help-Site Computer Manuals - Internet
  • DNS
• Scott Newton's TCP/IP tutorial, DNS section -- not impressive
• DNS Tips and Tricks from the DNS resources directory
• Setting up DNS
• Fast Guide to DNS -- too basic

Etc

Society

Groupthink : Two Party System as Polyarchy : Corruption of Regulators : Bureaucracies : Understanding Micromanagers and Control Freaks : Toxic Managers :   Harvard Mafia : Diplomatic Communication : Surviving a Bad Performance Review : Insufficient Retirement Funds as Immanent Problem of Neoliberal Regime : PseudoScience : Who Rules America : Neoliberalism  : The Iron Law of Oligarchy : Libertarian Philosophy

Quotes

War and Peace : Skeptical Finance : John Kenneth Galbraith :Talleyrand : Oscar Wilde : Otto Von Bismarck : Keynes : George Carlin : Skeptics : Propaganda  : SE quotes : Language Design and Programming Quotes : Random IT-related quotes :  Somerset Maugham : Marcus Aurelius : Kurt Vonnegut : Eric Hoffer : Winston Churchill : Napoleon Bonaparte : Ambrose Bierce :  Bernard Shaw : Mark Twain Quotes

Bulletin:

Vol 25, No.12 (December, 2013) Rational Fools vs. Efficient Crooks The efficient markets hypothesis : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2013 : Unemployment Bulletin, 2010 :  Vol 23, No.10 (October, 2011) An observation about corporate security departments : Slightly Skeptical Euromaydan Chronicles, June 2014 : Greenspan legacy bulletin, 2008 : Vol 25, No.10 (October, 2013) Cryptolocker Trojan (Win32/Crilock.A) : Vol 25, No.08 (August, 2013) Cloud providers as intelligence collection hubs : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : Inequality Bulletin, 2009 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Copyleft Problems Bulletin, 2004 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Energy Bulletin, 2010 : Malware Protection Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 26, No.1 (January, 2013) Object-Oriented Cult : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2011 : Vol 23, No.11 (November, 2011) Softpanorama classification of sysadmin horror stories : Vol 25, No.05 (May, 2013) Corporate bullshit as a communication method  : Vol 25, No.06 (June, 2013) A Note on the Relationship of Brooks Law and Conway Law

History:

Fifty glorious years (1950-2000): the triumph of the US computer engineering : Donald Knuth : TAoCP and its Influence of Computer Science : Richard Stallman : Linus Torvalds  : Larry Wall  : John K. Ousterhout : CTSS : Multix OS Unix History : Unix shell history : VI editor : History of pipes concept : Solaris : MS DOS :  Programming Languages History : PL/1 : Simula 67 : C : History of GCC development :  Scripting Languages : Perl history   : OS History : Mail : DNS : SSH : CPU Instruction Sets : SPARC systems 1987-2006 : Norton Commander : Norton Utilities : Norton Ghost : Frontpage history : Malware Defense History : GNU Screen : OSS early history

Classic books:

The Peter Principle : Parkinson Law : 1984 : The Mythical Man-Month :  How to Solve It by George Polya : The Art of Computer Programming : The Elements of Programming Style : The Unix Hater’s Handbook : The Jargon file : The True Believer : Programming Pearls : The Good Soldier Svejk : The Power Elite

Most popular humor pages:

Manifest of the Softpanorama IT Slacker Society : Ten Commandments of the IT Slackers Society : Computer Humor Collection : BSD Logo Story : The Cuckoo's Egg : IT Slang : C++ Humor : ARE YOU A BBS ADDICT? : The Perl Purity Test : Object oriented programmers of all nations : Financial Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : The Most Comprehensive Collection of Editor-related Humor : Programming Language Humor : Goldman Sachs related humor : Greenspan humor : C Humor : Scripting Humor : Real Programmers Humor : Web Humor : GPL-related Humor : OFM Humor : Politically Incorrect Humor : IDS Humor : "Linux Sucks" Humor : Russian Musical Humor : Best Russian Programmer Humor : Microsoft plans to buy Catholic Church : Richard Stallman Related Humor : Admin Humor : Perl-related Humor : Linus Torvalds Related humor : PseudoScience Related Humor : Networking Humor : Shell Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2012 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2013 : Java Humor : Software Engineering Humor : Sun Solaris Related Humor : Education Humor : IBM Humor : Assembler-related Humor : VIM Humor : Computer Viruses Humor : Bright tomorrow is rescheduled to a day after tomorrow : Classic Computer Humor

The Last but not Least Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt. Ph.D

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Created May 16, 1996; Last modified: March 12, 2019