DNS configuration problem

[Robert Schelander]

Hi!

I've got a question concerning setting up DNS for a ham (amateur radio)
tcp server.

First let me tell you our situation. We are a small group of hams
who want use tcpip on the air. The problem is, that the next tcp/ip server
and
DNS is hundreds of kilometers away and the connection to this
is one not very fast. So I've built our own server. The only problem now is
the DNS configuration.

We don't have a permanent connection to the internet, so a full lookup
with the help of the world root servers is not possible. So I've configured
named.conf to forward only. But because of the slow connection to this
forward DNS it is desirable to cache all resolve requests. Another point is,
that I want to add own names in our address range (44.143.216/24)
for testing puropses. Because of this I've set the ampr.org zone to master,
but this configuration doesn't work the way I want. It's not surprising,
because I'm neither master nor slave of ampr.org. If I request an ip
which name is included in ampr.org it works, but for other ampr.org
names it doesn't forward the request but immediately says that this host
is not known. Maybe named thinks: if master doesn't know, who else should -
and because of this doesn't forward the request.
The type hint for ampr.org does not work too, because only the root zone is
allowed to be a hint zone. What to do now?
Any ideas? Any other types available which could help?
Maybe some sort of "type ham_localmaster;" :)

I'm using bind8 with kernel 2.2.10

thanks in advance
Robert



// named.conf

options {
directory "/var/named";

forward only;
forwarders {
  44.130.56.25;
};

listen-on port 53 { any; };
};

/* root zone, don't know whether this is necessary is my case */
zone "." {
        type hint;
        file "root.hint";
};

zone "0.0.127.in-addr.arpa" {
type master;
file "127.0.0.zone";
};

/* my intranet, works fine */
zone "sch" {
        notify no;
type master;
file "sch";
        allow-query { 192.168.1/24; localhost; };
        allow-transfer { 192.168.1/24; localhost; };
        allow-update { 192.168.1.1; localhost; };
};

zone "1.168.192.in-addr.arpa" {
        notify no;
        type master;
        file "192.168.1.zone";
};

/* ampr.org, does not really work*/
zone "ampr.org" {
notify no;
type master;
file "ampr.org";
allow-update { none; };
allow-transfer { any; };
allow-query { any; };
};

zone "44.in-addr.arpa" {
notify no;
type master;
file "44.zone";
};