Internal DNS Help...

[Mark.Andrews at nominum.com]

> I've been on the list for about a week and I'm trying to do what I think
> 
> is really simple, but I'm obviously missing something.  I teach at a
> school and want to make an internal domain that the students can use but
> 
> not broadcast it to the world as not to mess anything up.  I have a
> primary server that is doing caching for us right now.
> 
> I have a fake domain set up at the moment (linux.bogus as per the
> HowTO....just for now) and have gotten it to work.  If I type
> "booz.linux.bogus" at a client computer set to use this server for DNS,
> it finds that machine in my network.  However, I can't take it the next
> step, just having the students type "booz" (or http://booz).  On the DNS
> 
> server I can do that through nslookup and it works, still spits back the
> 
> IP address.  However, not on the other machine.  My resolv.conf file is
> set to search "linux.bogus" first, but this doesn't seem to work for the
> 
> client computers.  The whole reason I think it would be nice to just
> have the students type one name is that a lot of them, especially the
> younger kids, wouldn't then get confused and think we are actually on
> the web.  Am I making sense?

	You need to configure resolv.conf (or the equivalent) on all the
	client machines.
> 
> One that note I have one last question, what are acceptable internal
> domain names to use?  I've read the RFC that talks about the 4 testing
> TLDs, but I still don't know what to actually call my "fake" domain.  If
> 
> I'm not actually broadcasting outside of here, can it be anything?

	It could be anything, but I would get an registered domainname
	and use it.  While you say you won't be connecting to the
	Internet in the future, I've seen this said many times yet there
	were connections made.

	Also if you have not set up a internal root server, do so.  It
	only entails configuring a (some) server(s) to serve ".".

	Also if you are not using the reserved private address space I
	would do so.
> 
> 
> Thank you in advance.  I can see this list is very busy, and I have no
> doubt that this has probably been answered before, but a lot of
> searching only brought some answers (like the RFC thing).
> 
> Ryan Booz
> Belleville Mennonite School, Tech Coordinator
	
	Mark
--
Mark Andrews, Nominum Inc.
1 Seymour St., Dundas Valley, NSW 2117, Australia
PHONE: +61 2 9871 4742                 INTERNET: Mark.Andrews at nominum.com