bind on standalone pc

[Kevin Darcy]

Jens wrote:

> Matthew Thompson <matthew.thompson at lrfairplay.com> wrote:
>
> > > And where do I put my CNAMEs if I don't have a master zone?
> >
> > Get BIND up and create a zone of ".internal", set your domain on the
> > machine's host settings to ".internal"
>
> Normally I set the domain of my PC to that of the provider. If I'm
> connected to provider1, my domain is provider1.com, if I'm connected
> to provider2, my domain is provider2.com. Therfore, in the first case
> the name SMTP is interpreted as SMTP.provider1.com or in the other
> case as SMTP.provider2.com.
> Now I can define a alias (CNAME) where SMTP.provider1.com points to
> mailrelay.provider1.com and SMTP.provider2.com points to
> smtpx.provider2.com.

> Currently, I have defined a zone of "com." to do that but that is not
> very satisfying.

It's also dangerous. Make sure you never leak that "rogue" .com zone out
the Internet, otherwise you may poison other people's caches.

Given that caveat, though, personally, I'd define my own root zone rather
than "com". In fact, we have no "com" zone at all in our internal
DNS here. Zones are delegated directly from root to things like
chrysler.com and in-addr.arpa, skipping over the "top" level of the
namespace hierarchy completely.

I'm still unsure why you don't just run your own mailserver and have it
deliver mail directly. You're running your own nameserver already; how
much harder can it be? Seems like it would make your life simpler in many
ways, and you'd have more control over your destiny (as opposed to just
"punting" the mail to your ISP and _hoping_ that it gets delivered).

> > Don't forget to change the serial number of the zone.
>
> Why that?

That would only be necessary if you were replicating the zone to other
nameservers. Note that Dynamic Update increments the serial number
automatically, so if that's the mechanism you're using to update the
zone, you don't need an extra "increment" step.


- Kevin