
Setting Up a DNS Server
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As you can see, the BIND resolver’s configuration file is simple. The first line
searches for a server in the local domain. The other lines provide addresses of
nameservers the administrator knows about, which a resolver can fall back on if the
initial search for a server fails.
The third part of BIND provides tools such as the dig command for testing DNS. Go
to your console and type dig yahoo.com (or any known domain), and see what hap-
pens. We’ll discuss dig and the other utilities in this toolkit later.
Setting Up a DNS Server
To build our server, we’re going to use a fresh installation of the latest stable version
of Debian and configure it with the minimum number of packages.
If you don’t already have the net installation disk used in Chapter 2, download it
from http://www.us.debian.org/CD/netinst. Perform a netinstall and make sure to pro-
vide a fully qualified domain name. Then configure Debian as suggested here.
When you acquire the current release of Debian GNU/Linux, you may find differ-
ences between it and the version we used to write the following instructions. Linux
developers update their distributions frequently, and installation procedures change
with updates, patches, and new versions of the Linux kernel. If you do encounter dif-
ferences in the installation procedures we describe, look for the gist of what we
explain and you should have little trouble ...