Myname and DNS.

[Daniel Staal]

--As of May 3, 2009 11:10:49 AM +0930, David Walker is alleged to have said:

> Can someone please confirm whether I have this correct:
> /etc/hosts is a list of known machines for quick resolving without
> using external DNS servers or named.
> /etc/resolv.conf is instructions telling lookups whether to use the
> hosts file and what external DNS server to query. Also whether to use
> named.
> /etc/named.conf is the settings for running the local DNS server.

Bingo: That's just about perfect, I think.  (And note from that you can 
both run named and not use it...)

> I am looking through named.conf(5) and it is reasonably complex (for me).
> Are there any cheap setups that work?
> At the moment this is optional for me (BIND) but I would like to put
> some effort into it.

I think the 'default' setup works for most uses straight out of the box. 
(I haven't checked recently, I'll admit.)  The most likely thing you'd have 
to change is what interfaces/addresses named will listen on: I've seen some 
defaults that would only listen on 127.0.0.1 to the local box.

As for having your hostname match what a DNS query returns: It's not 
necessary, except for certain uses as an internet-facing server.  It's 
often nice to have just one name for things, but often the one assigned by 
you ISP isn't a great one.

Daniel T. Staal

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