Setting up a DNS - Start to finish.

Last week my domain name expired with my provider, so I decided to switch my domain registrar to Xilo, so that all my services would be together. However Xilo don't provide an entry on their Nameserver, so you have to provide your own if you actually want the domain to point to anywhere. A bit annoying, but I had been meaning to set up my own on my VPS anyway, and what a great opportunity, right?! So I sent a request off to one.com to cancel my existing account, to which they helpfully complied. Unhelpfully however they sent a confirmation email to my @ivings.org.uk address, the one they had just cancelled. Nice one guys! Due to this undersight I wasn't aware of my account termination until 2 days after. My situation so far; No website, no forwarding email address. To me this means that all of my emails were getting kicked back to the sender, frustrating to say the least! Moving on... setting up the DNS. Changing the domain DNS records First thing to do is change the records on the domain. This is fairly simple but note; If you want to host the DNS on the same system as your website like me, then you also need to set Glue Records which protect from circular dependencies: Nameserver 1 : ns1.ivings.org.uk Nameserver 2 : ns2.ivings.org.uk Glue : 95.172.245.87 The Glue record specifies the IP of my VPS, where the DNS will be hosted. Configuring the DNS First install bind:

apt-get install bind9

Next create the Zone that will represent your domain:

$ nano /etc/bind/zones/ivings.org.uk.db

 SOA ivings.org.uk. admin.ivings.org.uk. (
// Do not change these
2007031001
28800
3600
604800
38400
)


ivings.org.uk. IN NS ns1.ivings.org.uk.
ivings.org.uk. IN MX 10 mail.ivings.org.uk.

www IN A 172.0.0.1
ns1 IN A 172.0.0.1
mail IN A 172.0.0.1

As you can see I've set up my nameserver and mailserver (more on mail later) as well as some A records. You can find more information Zone files here. As you can see the A records are directing to localhost, as the DNS is set up on the same system as the site is hosted. Next create a reverse DNS zone file, this is used for reverse DNS lookups, and occasionally by mail server authentication. It is generally recommended and should look something like this;

$ nano rev.0.168.192.in-addr.arpa

 7200
@ IN SOA ns1.ivings.org.uk. admin.ivings.org.uk. (
2007031001;
28800;
604800;
604800;
86400
)

IN NS ns1.ivings.org.uk.
1 IN PTR ivings.org.uk.

Finally you will want to add these Zones to you named.conf.local file;

$ nano /etc/bind/named.conf.local

# For reverse DNS
zone "0.168.192.in-addr.arpa" {
   type master;
   file "/etc/bind/zones/rev.0.168.192.in-addr.arpa";
};

zone "ivings.org.uk" {
   type master;
   file "/etc/bind/zones/ivings.org.uk.db";
};

And start the bind service;

$ service bind9 start

 * Starting domain name service... bind9                                               [ OK ]

You can test your new DNS by replacing ivings.org.uk with your domain and following this link: http://freedns.afraid.org/domain/dnstrace.php?domain=ivings.org.uk Congrats, your DNS is up and running! If you want to make changes then be sure to reload the configuration files as well as restart bind:

$ sudo rndc reconfig
$ sudo rndc reload

server reload successful

$ service bind9 restart

 * Stopping domain name service... bind9                                               [ OK ]
 * Starting domain name service... bind9                                               [ OK ]

If you restart without reloading the files then the server will use cached versions, and the changes wont take effect.

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Published

11 March 2011

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