Lab 3 - DNS and BIND

Commands

named The DNS process. You can start and stop this process to provide DNS servers on the network.
  
chkconfig    Use this command to set processes to start automatically at boot time.
chkconfig --list   will list the state of all installed deamon processes
chkconfig httpd on   will set the web server to start at boot time.
  
service A RedHat command to allow the starting and stopping of deamon processes.
service named restart   will cause the DNS server to restart.
  
dig A command to query a DNS server.
dig aylesworth.ca   will get info about aylesworth.ca
dig @localhost aylesworth.ca ANY   will specify the DNS server to use and ask for ANY records about aylesworth.ca.

Files

/etc/resolv.conf The configuration file for the resolver. This is used by clients (not BIND) to find the IP address from a domain name.
  
/etc/named.conf The configuration file for named.
  
/var/named RedHat's default location for named config files. The location of this directory can be changed in the /etc/named.conf file.
  
/var/log/messages     The default system log files. Any startup error messages for named are loged here. If named fails to start then check the end of this file for error messages.