Setting up my domain

[Kevin Darcy]

mtepel at my-deja.com wrote:

> I'm getting dsl, and I have static ip addresses.
> The ISP will host my domain in their DNS as the secondary name server.
>
> I'm not experienced with DNS at all, and am not quite sure how this
> works (e.g. secondary vs. primary).  I assume that somehow I have to
> run my own primary name server on my linux box in order for my domain
> to be accessible to the outside world.
>
> Does someone have a fairly simple explanation of how to do this?  I
> have seen the linux DNS howto and some other documents, but they are
> confusing to me and seem to cover material far beyond what I want to do.
>
> I just want machine to be accessible via my own domain name from
> outside my home LAN (given that I can get my ISP to be a secondary name
> server).

Sounds like you just need to register a domain, with your machine being
master (aka primary) for it, and your ISP being slave (aka secondary). The
5 basic steps would be (you may have already done the first 1 or 2):

1) Set up your machine as a caching-only server with an Internet root hints
file.
2) Find a domain name that you like and make sure it's available
3) Set up the master zone on your machine and verify that it works
4) Have your ISP become a slave and make sure that you can resolve names in
the domain from their server.
5) Register the domain, listing your server and one or more of your ISP's
servers.

Up until recently, Network Solutions was the only registrar for .com, .org
and .net domains, but now there are many. I can't really recommend any of
the new ones, but I can recommend *against* Network Solutions and urge you
to shop around. You'll need a registrar in both steps (5) and (2), because
just querying the Internet DNS isn't enough to tell you whether a domain
name is actually available to be registered; even if it doesn't appear in
the DNS, it could be "reserved" by someone else.

You should really get a copy of the _DNS_and_BIND_ O'Reilly book; it has
some clear information on how to accomplish all of this.


- Kevin