This How-to is all about setting up a personal DNS server. This is also my documentation on how i install and configure DNS server on Centos 5.2, i hope it will help also other people specially those who are still studying Linux as their primary OS. I install bind in a chroot environment.

For this How to i use the following.
1. Domain: raxso.net
2. IP Address: 192.168.1.1
3. Forwarders: 208.67.222.222, 208.67.220.220 (Open DNS servers)

1. Install the following packages.

yum -y install bind bind-chroot bind-libs bind-utils caching-nameserver

2. Configure rndc:

BIND includes a utility called rndc that allows you to administer the named daemon, locally or remotely, with command line statements. The rndc program uses the /etc/rndc.conf file for its configuration options, which can be overridden with command line options.

In order to prevent unauthorized users on other systems from controlling BIND on your server, a shared secret key method is used to explicitly grant privileges to particular hosts. In order for rndc to issue commands to any named, even on a local machine, the keys used in /etc/named.conf and /etc/rndc.conf must match.

cd /var/named/chroot/etc
rndc-confgen > rndc.key
chown root:named rndc.key

Edit rndc.key so it looks like this :

key "rndckey" {
algorithm hmac-md5;
secret "L1NnF/pGne66OevgVrgzSA==";
};


You must remove some option lines. You DON’T NEED anything else in the file.

A symlink in /etc exists and points to the rndc.key file we’ve just created, named expects that file there in order to be able to authenticate against rndc.
3. Configure /var/named/chroot/etc/named.conf

// we include the rndckey (copy-paste from rndc.key created earlier)
key "rndckey" {
algorithm hmac-md5;
secret "L1NnF/pGne66OevgVrgzSA==";
};

// we assume our server has the IP 192.168.1.1serving the 192.168.1.0/24 subnet
controls {
inet 127.0.0.1 allow { 127.0.0.1; } keys { "rndckey"; };
inet 192.168.1.1 allow { 192.168.1.0/24; } keys { "rndckey"; };
};

options {
directory "/var/named";
pid-file "/var/run/named/named.pid";

recursion yes;

allow-recursion {
127.0.0.1;
192.168.1.0/24;
};

// these are the opendns servers (optional)
forwarders {
208.67.222.222;
208.67.220.220;
};

listen-on {
127.0.0.1;
192.168.1.1;
};

/*
* If your nameservers is behind firewall you might need to uncomment the query-source
* directive below.
*/
query-source address * port 53;

// for security people can't try to guess what version you're running
version "REFUSED";

allow-query {
127.0.0.1;
192.168.1.0/24;
};
};

server 192.168.1.1 {
keys { rndckey; };
};

zone "." IN {
type hint;
file "named.ca";
};

zone "raxso.net" IN {
type master;
file "data/raxso.net.zone";
allow-update { none; };

};


4. Lets create our first zone:

#vi /var/named/chroot/var/named/data/raxso.net.zone
$TTL 38400
raxso.net. IN SOA ns.raxso.net admin.raxso.net (
2008090335 ; Serial
10800 ; Refresh after 3 hours
3600 ; Retry after 1 hour
604800 ; Expire after 1 week
86400) ; Minimum TTL 1 day

raxso.net. IN NS ns.raxso.net.
raxso.net. IN MX 1 mx.raxso.net.
raxso.net. IN MX 5 mx2.raxso.net.
ns.raxso.net. IN A 192.168.1.1
cacti.raxso.net. IN A 192.168.1.1
desktop.raxso.net. IN A 192.168.1.10
mail.raxso.net. IN CNAME mx.raxso.net.
mx.raxso.net. IN A 192.168.1.2
mx2.raxso.net. IN A 192.168.1.1

Don’t forget the “.” it is very important.

5. Make sure that the service starts even if it is rebooted

chkconfig --levels 235 named on
service named start

make sure the service is running

# rndc status
number of zones: 1
debug level: 0
xfers running: 0
xfers deferred: 0
soa queries in progress: 0
query logging is OFF
recursive clients: 0/1000
tcp clients: 0/100
server is up and running

6. Lets query:

# nslookup mx.raxso.net 127.0.0.1
Server: 127.0.0.1
Address: 127.0.0.1#53

Name: mx.raxso.net
Address: 192.168.1.1
# nslookup www.google.com 127.0.0.1
Server: 127.0.0.1
Address: 127.0.0.1#53

Non-authoritative answer:
www.google.com canonical name = google.navigation.opendns.com.
Name: google.navigation.opendns.com
Address: 208.67.219.230
Name: google.navigation.opendns.com
Address: 208.67.219.231

7. If all went well and query is working fine you can now setup the /etc/resolv.conf on the server.
It should look like this.

# vi /etc/resolv.conf

search raxso.net
nameserver 127.0.0.1

Setup the clients and and point them to use the new DNS servers.

# vi /etc/resolv.conf

search raxso.net
nameserver 192.168.1.1

That’s all folks hope you learn something today……