Installing and Administering Internet Services

Chapter 3 81
Configuring and Administering the BIND Name Service
Configuring a Primary Master Name Server
The current origin is appended to names that do not
end with a dot. For example, localhost in the first A
record is interpreted as localhost.div.inc.com.
HINFO Host Information records. The HINFO records indicate
the hardware and operating system of the host.
CNAME Canonical Name record. The CNAME record specifies an
alias for a canonical name (the host’s official name). If
an alias name is looked up, it is replaced with the
canonical name and data for the canonical name is
looked up. All other resource records should use the
canonical name instead of the alias.
WKS Well Known Service records. The WKS record lists the
services supported by a host. The list of services comes
from the host’s /etc/services file. There should be
only one WKS record per protocol per address.
MX Mail Exchanger records. MX records specify a weighted
list of hosts to try when mailing to a destination on the
Internet. The MX data indicates an alternate host or list
of hosts that accept mail for the target host if the target
host is down or inaccessible. The preference field
specifies the order a mailer should follow if there is
more than one mail exchanger for a given host. A low
preference value indicates a higher precedence for the
mail exchanger.
In the example below, mail for rabbit should go first
to rabbit.div.inc.com. If rabbit is down, its mail
should be sent to indigo.div.inc.com.
See “Installing and Administering sendmail” on page
117 for information on sendmail and how it uses the
name server’s MX records for mail routing.
;
; db.div
;
@ IN SOA rabbit.div.inc.com. root.moon.div.inc.com.(
1 ; Serial
10800 ; Refresh every 3 hours
3600 ; Retry every hour