Installing and Administering Internet Services

Chapter 3 63
Configuring and Administering the BIND Name Service
Overview of the BIND Name Service
Figure 3-1 Structure of the DNS Name Space
How BIND Works
When a user who is logged into host venus in the nmt.edu domain types
the following command,
telnet indigo.div.inc.com
the following events occur:
1. The telnet process calls gethostbyname to get the internet address
of indigo.div.inc.com.
2. The gethostbyname routine invokes the BIND resolver, a set of
routines for querying name servers.
3. The resolver constructs a query and sends it to a name server. If the
local host is not running a name server, it should have a file called
/etc/resolv.conf, which contains one or more internet addresses
for name servers that serve the local domain. If the local host does not
have an /etc/resolv.conf file, the resolver sends the query to the
local name server.
4. The name server daemon, named, receives the query from the
resolver. Since the name server has information about only the hosts
in its local domain (nmt.edu), it cannot answer the query with the
information in its local database.
. (root)
com edu
inc nmt
purdue
cs
econdiv
indigo arthur
venus
= host
= domain