DNS on 10.3.8 Client edition for Dummies?

On 3/18/05 4:06 PM, "Jamie Kahn Genet" <jamiekgwizardling.geek.nz> wrote:

> Can any kind TidBITS reader point me towards a decent guide to setting
> up DNS for a small home office LAN of 2-4 Macs networked with 10/100
> Ethernet and an ADSL Speedtouch Router or similar type of setup?

Is there a reason WHY you need home DNS? It's a bit of overkill for a home
network.

--
John C. Welch Writer/Analyst
Bynkii.com Mac and other opinions
jwelchbynkii.com

--On March 18, 2005 2:06:18 PM -0800 Jamie Kahn Genet
<jamiekgwizardling.geek.nz> wrote:
> Can any kind TidBITS reader point me towards a decent guide to setting
> up DNS for a small home office LAN of 2-4 Macs networked with 10/100
> Ethernet and an ADSL Speedtouch Router or similar type of setup?

I did this with BIND on Linux long ago, but switched to djbdns (still on
linux) because I was tired of updating BIND all the time for security
patches.

<http://www.isc.org/index.pl?/sw/bind/>
<http://cr.yp.to/djbdns.html>

What I did maybe different than what you want to do. I wanted machines
that got their IP address via DHCP to be available via their computer name.
Plus I wanted my own top-level domain because these computers were behind a
firewall and I didn't want accidental (or intentional) collisions with
someone else's domain of the same name.

The djbdns site offers lots of how-to's on doing various things.

I found this useful in setting up my top-level domain:
<http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/dot-local.html>

Just avoid setting up a top-level domain of .local, it conflicts with
Rendezvous.

Some routers/firewalls that support dhcp will support DNS for machines on
the internal network. You might check that first, probably the easiest
thing to setup.

This may help to:

<http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/DNS-HOWTO.html>

It's not too complicated -- a couple zone files, with about
5-10 lines + number of machines in each, and some minor
customizations to named.conf. Unfortunately, BIND is big &
complicated software. Getting it wrong is easier than getting it
right, and bad DNS records may work, but cause problems for other
people on the Internet.

        The easiest thing is probably to have your ISP set up a few
DNS records for you. The latency of asking querying their DNS servers
instead of one on your LAN will trivial. Alternatively, you could use
a DNS service like EasyDNS.

        If you don't really need DNS service, you might be able to
get by with hosts files. Add a few lines like this into /etc/hosts,
and then copy it to every machine. Mac OS X (and most UNIXes and
Windows) consult host files before trying DNS lookups.

10.0.1.1 speedtouch
10.0.1.250 printer
10.0.1.251 imac

        This assumes you're using static addresses; dynamic DNS (if
you aren't) is much more complicated.


        All that said, if you really want to use DNS on Mac OS X,
it's a fairly standard BIND install. Mac OS X Server (which might be
nice for a small home office anyway, but costs more than client) has
a decent GUI for enabling & configuring DNS and maintaining zone
files. If you're doing it on client, read a few of the many documents
on BIND 9 -- pretty much everything they have to say is relevant. I
suggest you *not* publicize your private domain on the Internet --
this reduces the likelihood of lame delegations and other problems,
and avoids the official requirement for a backup (slave) name server.

        Assuming you have bbedit, try "more /var/named/*; bbedit -u
/etc/named.conf /var/named/local.zone
/var/named/0.0.127.in-addr.arpa". Copying the samples, create new
pointers to forward and reverse zones, then following the examples
and online docs, create & populate your own private forward & reverse
zones.

        Use named-checkconf & named-checkzone.


                                                Good luck,

-
Chris Pepper: <http://www.reppep.com/~pepper/>
Rockefeller University: <http://www.rockefeller.edu/>

I have read the thread to responf to Jamie's needs. These aditional resources might help.

http://mail.computertree.com/%7Ejosh/simple/dnshelper.html

http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2003/05/28/dns_primer.html

http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2003/04/15/bind.html

http://www.dns.net/dnsrd/servers/macos.html

http://www.infoblox.com/products/dnsone.cfm

--
Steve Tryon

IT
stevebwd.com
BLACK & WHITE DESIGN