iX 6.5)

Chapter 8 123

DNS BIND/iX

Server Conﬁguration File named.conf

The conﬁguration ﬁle, named.conf, has a completely new syntax. The

conﬁguration ﬁle in BIND 4.x was called named.boot.

The utility “named-bootconf.pl”, written in Perl, available with the

package, can be used to convert 4.x (8.1.1) conﬁguration ﬁles. The

complete path of this ﬁle in the installation is

/BIND/PUB/bin/named-bootconf.pl.

See Appendix D , “Server Conﬁguration Migration,” for directions on

running the named-bootconf.pl utility.

The ﬁle named.conf provides conﬁguration information about the

database, information for the DNS server program NAMED. The

database information is divided into zones. A zone will be either a

domain (for example, india.hp.com) or an IP network (for example,

4.10.15.IN-ADDR.ARPA. A DNS server needs both types of zones in

order to be able to resolve names to IP addresses, and IP addresses to

names.

The named.conf conﬁguration indicates to NAMED which zones it is

going to be a server for, whether or not the server is a master or a slave

for each zone, and points to the ﬁles where the database information is

maintained. When a slave zone is conﬁgured, the address of the master

server for that zone will also be included.

A DNS server which is the master for a zone is the one where the

master copy of the data is maintained. A DNS server which is a slave

for a zone may keep a copy of the data too, but will open a connection to

the master server in order to obtain updates. This update process is

called a “zone transfer”. A DNS server may be both the master server

for some zones, and a slave server for others.

A template /BIND/PUB/etc/named.conf has been provided with the

installation of DNS BIND/iX. You can use this ﬁle, following the

commented instructions within it as a basis for your own

/BIND/PUB/etc/named.conf.