Bind 9 Administrator Reference Manual

Chapter 1. Introduction
The Internet Domain Name System (DNS) consists of the syntax to specify the names of entities in the
Internet in a hierarchical manner, the rules used for delegating authority over names, and the system
implementation that actually maps names to Internet addresses. DNS data is maintained in a group of
distributed hierarchical databases.
1.1. Scope of Document
The Berkeley Internet Name Domain (BIND) implements an domain name server for a number of
operating systems. This document provides basic information about the installation and care of the
Internet Software Consortium (ISC) BIND version 9 software package for system administrators.
This version of the manual corresponds to BIND version 9.2.
1.2. Organization of This Document
In this document, Section 1 introduces the basic DNS and BIND concepts. Section 2 describes resource
requirements for running BIND in various environments. Information in Section 3 is task-oriented in its
presentation and is organized functionally, to aid in the process of installing the BIND 9 software. The
task-oriented section is followed by Section 4, which contains more advanced concepts that the system
administrator may need for implementing certain options. Section 5 describes the BIND 9 lightweight
resolver. The contents of Section 6 are organized as in a reference manual to aid in the ongoing
maintenance of the software. Section 7 addresses security considerations, and Section 8 contains
troubleshooting help. The main body of the document is followed by several Appendices which contain
useful reference information, such as a Bibliography and historic information related to BIND and the
Domain Name System.
1.3. Conventions Used in This Document
In this document, we use the following general typographic conventions:
To describe: We use the style:
a pathname, filename, URL, hostname, mailing list
name, or new term or concept
Fixed width
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