How to DNS my home network with Linux

I'm trying to set up BIND on my RH9 box, but cant make heads nor tails of the DNS howto or even the O'Reilly BIND book.

I just want something simple so that i don't have to change /etc/hosts on every machine every time I make a small change
in topology.

Here is my position:
1. I have a dynamic IP 203.<something> address kindly lent to me by my ISP to which I am successfully pointing a domain
name from dhs.org, this is all fine.

2. This domain name only points to my NAT router, behind which I have a succesful network of DHCP'd hosts, all given
their own private 10.0.0.* static IP addresses based on their MAC addresses.

3. All these hosts can successfully do DNS queries with my ISP's nameserver and I can surf the web in style.

What I'd really like to be able to do is set up an internal nameserver that these hosts can also ask for the internal
network hostnames, I don't really care if the outside world can resolve these names (since they are on a NATted private
network anyway). The world can access my network through my dhs.org domain name in any case.

Here's the question:
Is it possible to set up named so that it doesn't care about the outside world?

Any replies or links would be appreciated.

Ben

In message <3fd1f4ff$0$1728$(E-Mail Removed)> , Bob wrote:

> I'm trying to set up BIND on my RH9 box, but cant make heads nor tails of
> the DNS howto or even the O'Reilly BIND book.
>
> I just want something simple so that i don't have to change /etc/hosts on
> every machine every time I make a small change in topology.
>
> Here is my position:
> 1. I have a dynamic IP 203.<something> address kindly lent to me by my ISP
> to which I am successfully pointing a domain name from dhs.org, this is
> all fine.
>
> 2. This domain name only points to my NAT router, behind which I have a
> succesful network of DHCP'd hosts, all given their own private 10.0.0.*
> static IP addresses based on their MAC addresses.
>
> 3. All these hosts can successfully do DNS queries with my ISP's
> nameserver and I can surf the web in style.
>
> What I'd really like to be able to do is set up an internal nameserver
> that these hosts can also ask for the internal network hostnames, I don't
> really care if the outside world can resolve these names (since they are
> on a NATted private network anyway). The world can access my network
> through my dhs.org domain name in any case.
>
> Here's the question:
> Is it possible to set up named so that it doesn't care about the outside
> world?
>
> Any replies or links would be appreciated.
>
For DNS:

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/DNS-HOWTO.html

If you want to be able to resolve local DCHP addresses then either you need
to fix your DHCP server to always issue the same address to the same
machine and/or make sure it can issue dynamic updates to the DNS server
(easy if they're the same Linux machine, not so easy if you're using a
little box as router/DHCP server).

Somewhere I found the docs on how to set it all up for dynamic updates but I
can't find them now (although I did get it all working from an existing
BIND installation to BIND+DHCP+DDNS in about 15 minutes).

Dave
--
mail: da (E-Mail Removed) (without the space)
http://www.llondel.org/
So many gadgets, so little time...

In article <3fd1f4ff$0$1728$(E-Mail Removed)> , Bob wrote:
>
> What I'd really like to be able to do is set up an internal nameserver that these hosts can also ask for the internal
> network hostnames, I don't really care if the outside world can resolve these names (since they are on a NATted private
> network anyway). The world can access my network through my dhs.org domain name in any case.

To do this you need to not only run a DNS server to publish addresses, you
will also need to run a cache (or forwarder) to send your requests to
the appropiate place (since your ISP's server isn't going to know about
your local domains).

This isn't hard to do with the djbdns suite. You can run run dnscache
as your cache (and not use your ISP's) and configure it to ask your local
server (for which you can use tinydns) for you special domain (for which
you want to pick something that won't conflict with any real domains).

You should be able to do something similar with bind.

"Bob" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:3fd1f4ff$0$1728$(E-Mail Removed) u...
> I'm trying to set up BIND on my RH9 box, but cant make heads nor tails of
the DNS howto or even the O'Reilly BIND book.
>
> I just want something simple so that i don't have to change /etc/hosts on
every machine every time I make a small change
> in topology.
>
> Here is my position:
> 1. I have a dynamic IP 203.<something> address kindly lent to me by my ISP
to which I am successfully pointing a domain
> name from dhs.org, this is all fine.
>
> 2. This domain name only points to my NAT router, behind which I have a
succesful network of DHCP'd hosts, all given
> their own private 10.0.0.* static IP addresses based on their MAC
addresses.
>
> 3. All these hosts can successfully do DNS queries with my ISP's
nameserver and I can surf the web in style.
>
> What I'd really like to be able to do is set up an internal nameserver
that these hosts can also ask for the internal
> network hostnames, I don't really care if the outside world can resolve
these names (since they are on a NATted private
> network anyway). The world can access my network through my dhs.org domain
name in any case.
>
> Here's the question:
> Is it possible to set up named so that it doesn't care about the outside
world?
>
> Any replies or links would be appreciated.

My favourite is dnsmasq - simple to set up and uses entries from /etc/hosts,
so you do not need to tailor the DNS records. For details, see
<http://thekelleys.org.uk/dnsmasq/doc.html>.

HTH

Tauno Voipio
tauno voipio @ iki fi