Configuring and Managing MPE/iX Internet Services (August 2002)

Chapter 8
DNS BIND/iX
Server Configuration File named.conf
121
/BIND/PUB/bin/ nslookup
Interactive name server query utility.
/BIND/PUB/bin/ dnsquery
DNS server query tool.
/BIND/PUB/bin/ host
Host information lookup tool.
/BIND/PUB/bin/ addr
Address lookup tool.
/BIND/PUB/bin/ named- bootconf.pl
Perl script to assist in converting BIND 4.x named.boot to 8.x named.conf.
/BIND/PUB/bin/ nsupdate
Zone transfer program — called internally by nameservers to transfer zone information
from primary to secondary servers
/BIND/PUB/ public_html
Linked to sub-directory /BIND/PUB/doc-8.1.1/html
In addition, there are the following directories included with this product:
/BIND/PUB/ include Include code files.
/BIND/PUB/lib Library routines
Server Configuration File named.conf
The configuration file, named.conf, has a completely new syntax. The configuration file in BIND 4.x was
called named.boot.
The utility “named-bootconf.pl”, written in Perl, available with the package, can be used to convert 4.x
(8.1.1) configuration files. The complete path of this file in the installation is
/BIND/PUB/bin/named-bootconf.pl.
See Appendix D, “Server Configuration Migration,” for directions on running the named-bootconf.pl utility.
The file named.conf provides configuration information about the database, information for the DNS server
program NAMED. The database information is divided into zones. A zone will be either a domain (for
example, india.hp.com) or an IP network (for example, 4.10.15.IN-ADDR.ARPA. A DNS server needs both
types of zones in order to be able to resolve names to IP addresses, and IP addresses to names.
The named.conf configuration indicates to NAMED which zones it is going to be a server for, whether or not
the server is a master or a slave for each zone, and points to the files where the database information is
maintained. When a slave zone is configured, the address of the master server for that zone will also be
included.
A DNS server which is the master for a zone is the one where the master copy of the data is maintained. A
DNS server which is a slave for a zone may keep a copy of the data too, but will open a connection to the
master server in order to obtain updates. This update process is called a “zone transfer”. A DNS server may
be both the master server for some zones, and a slave server for others.