[GLLUG] Building a new system

[Robert G. Brown]

On Fri, 25 Jul 2003 10:01:20 -0500, Jeremy Bowers <jerf at jerf.org> wrote:

>Melson, Paul wrote:
>> It always blows my mind when I hear someone say that BIND named is still
>> the most widely used nameserver on the Internet.  The same with
>> Sendmail.  Both fine systems, but both are so very counterintuitive when
>> it comes to configuration.
>> 
>> But beyond complaining about cryptic config files, are there specific
>> questions that people have?  I've had reasonable success with BIND in
>> the past and I feel like I could probably answer a question or two (so
>> long as it's not on automating reverse lookup updates for dynamically
>> addressed hosts).
>
>Well, I'm not currently futzing with it because of other time issues. 
>But I guess I do have one request that could help. Could somebody post 
>an *actually working* BIND file for some relatively simple domain?
Seems like a good idea.. I'll find one and post it (foward lookups).

>The examples in the BIND HOWTO are actually harder to wade through 
>because of their use of bad domains (.bogus), and over-use of 
>"localhost". I think seeing a real example would help a lot.
I've never looked att he HOW-TO, but I can tell you that the O'Reilly
"DNS and BIND" book provides excellent coverage of the topic.

>I think I'd have an easier time understand what's going on if I could 
>search&replace something into a working file (even if it's not perfect), 
>then I could play with that file to see what happens, whereas trying to 
>set one up from scratch is difficult because the HOWTO keeps doing wierd 
>(to me) things.
Makes wense... THe ORA book start simple and then branches out from there.
In pnciple, this stuff is not that hard; there are layers of features to
handle the conditions that we all live with, which are not really "core"
functionality (like security/encyption and dynamic addressing schemes).
What is often needed is some focus on that core (which is, after all,
returning IP address given names, and vice-versa), with clear examples 
and good narrative. "DNS and BIND" provides that....

							Regards,
							---> RGB <---