Table of Contents
DNS_-_Bind9
Originally the Domain Register took care of any DNS entries relating to the Domain selected - kartbuilding.net
To setup Bind9 locally:
apt-get install bind9
This should install and work ok. Note: Firewall rules are required. See Firewall section. In order to start using bind locally, edit /etc/resolv.conf
search domainname.com nameserver 127.0.0.1
(The “search domainname.com” allows you to ping/access subdomain names without typing in the entire address. I.E. ping www will ping www.domainname.com )<br> Restart bind: - /etc/init.d/bind9 restart
Test and ping google etc. Bind should be resolving internet addresses. If not - Check Firewall.
Configing Bind (version 9):
Check to see if the following is referenced in /etc/bind/named.conf
include "/etc/bind/named.conf.local"; is in /etc/bind/named.conf
Edit the following file:
vi /etc/bind/named.conf.local
//This file contains all local and changable info.
//Begin File - by creating the following entry:
//----------- Begin Kartbuilding.net ------------
zone "kartbuilding.net" {
type master;
file "/etc/bind/zones/kartbuilding.net.zone";
allow-transfer { 88.211.211.211; }; ; Note this line is only for a secondary nameserver, allowing for zone transfer.
};
//The next is the reverse DNS entry.
zone "1.201.136.in-addr.arpa" {
type master;
file "/etc/bind/zones/136.201.1.db";
};
//------------ End of kartbuilding.net ----------
Create the kartbuilding.net.zone file:
vi /etc/bind/zones/kartbuilding.net.zone
//Begin file --------------------------------
$TTL 3h
@ IN SOA ns.kartbuilding.net. root.kartbuilding.net. (
2006120702 ; counter/ Serial ; in the format YYYYMMDDCC where CC - counter 1 to 99
20m ; refresh
15m ; Retry Interval
1w ; Expire
1h ) ; Negative Cache TTL
IN NS ns.kartbuilding.net. ; must the name of the name server used to register kartbuilding.net
; IN NS ns1.secondary nameserver. ; A semi-colon is used to comment out lines in bind configs.
IN MX 10 mail.burkesys.com.
ns IN A 136.201.1.250
mail IN A 88.198.194.194
wiki IN A 88.198.194.194
monitor IN A 136.201.1.250
www IN A 88.198.194.194
@ IN A 136.201.1.250 ; the @ is for the no www name. E.g. http://kartbuilding.net (without www's)
www.portal IN A 136.201.1.250
//End file ------------------------------------
Create Reverse DNS lookup file: This is just for reverse DNS lookups. Reverse DNS entries also have to be made with your ISP - as reverse DNS entries come from them.
vi /etc/bind/zones/136.201.1.db
//Start of file -------------------------
@ IN SOA kartbuilding.net. root.kartbuilding.net. (
3 ; counter/ Serial
15m ; refresh
15m ; Retry Interval
1w ; Expire
1h ) ; Negative Cache TTL
IN NS ns.kartbuilding.net.
250 IN PTR servername.kartbuilding.net.
//End of file ---------------------------
Start bind and Test:
/etc/init.d/bind start CHECK LOGS:: tail /var/log/daemon.log Test with dig, nslookup and ping. To test with nslookup, at the prompt type in "set type=mx" to query mx records. Similiarly, "set type=A" for A records. Go to http://www.dnsstuff.com and carryout a DNS report.
If you don't have bind installed you wont have nslookup and you'll get:
-bash: nslookup: command not found
To solve this:
apt-get install dnsutils
Setting up A Secondary DNS
Having a secondary DNS is very important, especially if your services (web,mail,db etc) are running off different boxes. The www could be up, but if DNS goes down - no www traffic 
There is very little to setting up a secondary dns entry/server. It takes care of everything, e.g. updating etc. from master to slave itself.
Config Master To setup the master (main or primary DNS server) the following must be added:
vi /etc/bind/zones/kartbuilding.net.zone
allow-transfer { 88.211.211.211; };
//where the above ip is the secondary dns server's.
Config Slave Of course bind will have to be installed and it could be perhaps serving out dns for another domain! Edit the following file:
vi /etc/bind/named.conf.local
//add the following lines:
zone "kartbuilding.net" {
type slave;
file "/etc/bind/slaves/kartbuilding.net.zone";
masters { 136.201.1.250; };
allow-transfer { 136.201.1.250; };
};
The /etc/bind/slaves directory must be created, and also bind must be given permission to write to this slaves directory. This is because bind runs as user bind - and can only edit files it owns, or if the directory is chmod'd 775.
mkdir /etc/bind/slaves chown bind:bind /etc/bind/slaves //I chose to change ownership of this file rather than chmod it 775.
The allow-transfer should be included even for the slave zone files, otherwise anyone could do a zone transfer and lookup all your sub domains. See: Prevent_DNS_lookup_of_sub_domains
Thats it! Secondary DNS setup. Restart/reload bind on both servers. Check /var/log/daemon.log for updates' Check also after the slave updates from the master. The slave will place dns files in /etc/bind/slaves/
bind slave error: permission denied
On a Ubuntu box, I was getting:
bind dumping master file: /etc/bind/zones/slaves/: open: permission denied
Solution: http://smaftoul.wordpress.com/2009/04/17/ubuntu-and-bind-acting-as-slave/
vi /etc/apparmor.d/usr.sbin.named #add in: /etc/bind/zones/slaves/** rw,
Slow DNS lookup issues with bind9
If ping or netstat etc. takes a long time to return an ip - there is a problem. Carry out the following test:
dig www.burkesys.com
Identify the time taken. Try the same test on a different computer (your local one etc.). If it takes 2000+ msec (milliseconds) this is poor. After looking at problems found here: http://www.unixadmintalk.com/f59/bind-9-2-4-1-very-slow-resolving-uncached-querres-129112/index2.html and http://v6fix.net/db/bind9-ipv6-transport.html I realised bind9 was doing a lookup via ipv6. Although ipv6 is enabled in my default debian install, there is no ipv6 network. Bind9 however does a lookup over ipv6 first, then times out and tries ipv4.
Solutions: Disable ipv6 on Debian Sarge, or Disable ipv6 bind lookup, or use a different dns server for lookups.
It is difficult to cleanly disable ipv6 on Sarge, requiring reboot and trial and error. <br> In order to Disable ipv6 lookup on bind9 with Debian Sarge - a recompile is required. If you are using debian packages (like me) this is not ideal. <br> The default bind9 that ships with Debian Etch (9.3.2-P1.0-1) can easily be configured to use ipv4 by:
vi /etc/default/bind9 OPTIONS="-4 -u bind" //-4 = to use ipv4 only. As I was using Debian Sarge, and wanted a quick solution to my DNS lookup times, I decided to use my ISP dns server *only* for lookups. This entry is in /etc/resolv.conf and I put the following syntax: <code> search domainname.com nameserver 43.111.98.12 nameserver 43.111.21.45
Bind will still serve out all domain names when requested. The above simply uses the ISP's dns server for lookups on the server.
Solving Problems, Failings and Warnings from DNS report by www.dnsstuff.com
Open DNS servers fail warnings
Typically bind will allow any other server/ip to query it and use it as a DNS server for its queries. Therefore - a foreign server could be doing a dns lookup for hundreds of domains etc. and may overload your dns server! Here is how to solve this:
vi /etc/bind/named.conf.options
//put the following as the very first line (note the ip of secondary dns server):
acl recurseallow { 136.201.1.250; 127.0.0.1; 88.211.211.211; };
//at the bottom of the same file put:
//recursion no;
allow-recursion { recurseallow; };
Debian squeeze by default will only allow localhost and localnets to perform dns lookups. To allow a particular IP or IP range to carry out dns lookups with your dns server, you need to add the following:
vi /etc/bind/named.conf.options
options {
directory "/var/cache/bind";
// If there is a firewall between you and nameservers you want
// to talk to, you may need to fix the firewall to allow multiple
//..........
auth-nxdomain no; # conform to RFC1035
listen-on-v6 { any; };
allow-recursion { ip.address.range/26; 172.20.20.0/24; ip.address; };
};
Ref: http://debianserver.wikidot.com/squeeze:intranet-dns-cache
#On fedora, its a little different due to how the named options are stored. Here is the config:
vi /etc/named.conf
options {
pid-file "/var/named/chroot/var/run/named/named.pid";
directory "/var/named/chroot/var/named";
auth-nxdomain no;
//The following it to have a closed DNS Server.
allow-recursion { localhost; };
};
//
// a caching only nameserver config
//
zone "." {.................
Thats it. You now have a closed DNS server.
Old Config Example and Other Information
Make the following file: - /etc/bind/kartbuilding.net
$TTL 3h
@ IN SOA kartbuilding.net. root.kartbuilding.net. (
2006100659 ; Serial (A simple Counter to Increment after changing this file. eg. timestamp)
15m ; Refresh
15m ; Retry
1w ; Expire
1h ) ; Default TTL
NS ns.kartbuilding.net.
MX 10 mail.kartbuilding.net.
A 136.201.1.250
;Main domains
ns A 136.201.1.250
wiki A 136.201.1.250
mail A 136.201.1.250
mrtg A 136.201.1.250
www A 136.201.1.250
misc A 136.201.1.250
lists A 136.201.1.250
;Sub Mail domains
lists MX 5 lists
To Flush all DNS entries from CACHE ->
rndc flush
To Efficiently RELOAD DNS after adding a DNS entry ->
rndc reload <nowiki>//</nowiki>use this instead of reloading all of bind rndc reload domain.com <nowiki>//</nowiki>use this to reload just the domain.com config file
Prevent DNS lookup of sub domains
The “host” utility, which is default with debian, will attempt to perform a zone transfer in order to look at all of the sub domains! The syntax is:
host -l domain.com ip.of.their.ns.server #to find all of the authorative ns servers do the following: nslookup > set type=ns > domain.com
Another tool to do domain lookups is:
dig -t axfr
Typically it is an oversight which allows the above, especially on secondary ns's. The following line needs to be added to the slave dns entries:
vi /etc/bind/named.conf.local
#add the following for each slave zone, including the master ip address for example.
allow-transfer { some.ip.address.of.yours.eg.master.ns; };
DNS - Config Used: http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/network-administrator/ch-bind.html
DNS - Basic Config: http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/206#comment_8
DNS - Linux DNS Server VIDEO TUTORIAL - Explains all pieces: http://www.cbt4free.org/videos.php