Chapter 8. Configuring DNS

Congratulations! You have installed TCP/IP in the kernel, configured the network interface, and configured routing. At this point, you have completed all of the configuration tasks required to run TCP/IP on a Unix system. While none of the remaining tasks is required for TCP/IP software to operate, they are necessary for making the network more friendly and useful. In the next two chapters, we look at how to configure basic TCP/IP network services. Perhaps the most important of these is name service.

It is, as the name implies, a service specifically, a service intended to make the network more user-friendly. Computers are perfectly happy with IP addresses, but people prefer names. The importance of name service is indicated by the amount of coverage it has in this book. Chapter 3 discusses why name service is needed; this chapter covers how it is configured; and Appendix C covers the details of the name server configuration commands. This chapter provides sufficient information to show you how to configure the BIND software to run on your system.^[1] But if you want to know more about why something is done or details on how to do it, don't hesitate to refer to Chapter 3 and Appendix C.

^[1] BIND 8 is the version of domain name software that comes with most versions of Linux and with Solaris 8. A newer version of DNS software BIND 9 is also available. BIND 8 and BIND 9 use essentially the same configuration file syntax. The examples presented here should work with both BIND 8 and BIND 9.