Installation guide

234 Chapter 16. Berkeley Internet Name Domain (BIND)
statements are listed is important, as the first view statement that matches a particular client’s IP
address is used.
See Section 16.4.2 for more information about the view statement.
• zone "
zone-name " — Specifies particular zones for which this nameserver is authoritative.
The zone statement is primarily used to specify the file containing the zone’s configuration and
pass certain options about that zone to named that override other global option statements used in
/etc/named.conf.
The name of the zone is important, as it is the default value assigned to the $ORIGIN directive used
in the zone file and is appended to non-FQDNs. So, for example, if this zone statement defines the
namespace for domain.com, you should use domain.com as the zone-name so it will be
placed at the end of hostnames used in the zone file.
The most common zone statement options include:
• allow-query — Specifies the clients that are allowed to request information about this zone.
The default is to allow all query requests.
• allow-transfer — Specifies the slave servers that are allowed to request a transfer of the
zone’s information. The default is to allow all transfer requests.
• allow-update — Specifies the hosts that are allowed to dynamically update information in
their zone. The default is to deny all dynamic update requests.
Be very careful about allowing hosts to update information about their zone. Do not enable this
option unless the host specified is completely trusted. It is generally better to have an adminis-
trator manually update the zone’s records and reload the named service, if possible.
• file — Specifies the name of the file in the named working directory that contains the zone’s
configuration data. The default is /var/named.
• masters — Used if the zone is defined as a slave type. The masters option tells a slave’s
named the IP addresses from which to request authoritative zone information.
• notify — Works in a similar manner to the notify option used with the option statement.
• type — Defines the type of zone. The following types may be used:
• forward — Tells the nameserver to forward all requests for information about this zone to
other nameservers.
• hint — A special type of zone that is used to point to the root nameservers, which are used to
resolve queries when a zone is not otherwise known. You should not need to configure a hint
zone beyond the default in /etc/named.conf.
• master — Designates this nameserver as authoritative for this zone. A zone should be set as
the master type if you have the zone’s configuration files on this system.
• slave — Designates this nameserver as a slave server for this zone, telling named to request
the zone’s configuration files from the master nameserver’s IP address for that zone.
• zone-statistics — Tells named to keep statistics concerning this zone, writing them to ei-
ther the default location (/var/named/named.stats) or the place specially designated by the
statistics-file option in the server statement, if it exists.
16.2.1.1. Sample Zone Statements
Most changes to the /etc/named.conf file of a master or slave nameserver involves adding, mod-
ifying, or deleting zone statements. While these zone statements can contain many options, most