Newbie question

[Kevin Darcy]

xchris wrote:

> Let say i have to do these tasks:
>
> 1 - get a permanent connection with static IP address
> 1 - get a valid domain name (testing.com for example)
>
> i would like to make my machine respond to www.testing.com
> and to ftp.testing.com
> and receive mail   user at testing.com
>
> which are the steps to do?
> tell me if i'm wrong. i suppose:
>
> 1 - register in testing.com my 2 dns server adress (why 2?)

For redundancy. A single nameserver failure shouldn't cause your whole
domain to go "off the air" and for other nameservers to waste time and
resources trying to resolve names in it. Ideally, you should have more
than 2 nameservers, in topologically-different parts of whatever network
you're on.

>
> 2 - install a dns server that can resolv www. and ftp.

Um, yeah. But to elaborate, you'd need to set up a zone of type
"master", and populate the zone file with the mandatory resource records
(an SOA RR and at least 2 NS RR's), along with whatever A records, MX
records, etc. you may desire.

> 3 - compile mx record.

Compile? I'm not sure what you mean by that. MX records are just records
in the zone, like any other (except with a slightly different structure
and syntax). There is no extra "compilation" step required to include an
MX record in a zone.

I'd recommend the O'Reilly _DNS_and_BIND_ book (Fourth Edition) to get
yourself up to speed on DNS and BIND. It's widely considered the
"bible" on the subject.


- Kevin