I read Falko's linux set up tutorials on howtoforge and they were really nicely and completely written and I am pretty impressed. I appreciate the effort. Actually I have a question about DNS... I understand that Bind9 is the utility used for setting up name servers on a linux machine. I do know, also, that the DNS server nsX.mydomain.com has to be so called registered with the registrar of the TLD, mydomain.com. Other aspects that I am aware of the need to modify apache webserver settings for host as well as DHCP settings, Bind9 settings, etc... I gather that DNS takes times to propagate through the DNS servers before your TLD is actually recognized on the WWW. I also read from your tutorial that ISPConfig would be a good tool to use to manage DNS configurations. I am actually rather confused about the many issues revolving about DNS and I was just wondering if anyone would be able to give me something like a flow explanation for DNS issues from the start when a user possess a linux server and a dotcom domain name to it becoming "glued" and officially accessible on the WWW. It would be great it anyone could explain the big picture to me and then refer me some links to understand each and every of the smaller bits... Many of the web resources I have looked up provides bits and pieces of the information here and there and do not link up the entire picture... Many thanks, Leon BTW: I am running a FC5 LAMP server and VMWare loaded with Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper Drake Server edition. Once I have grasped Ubuntu and the DNS issue I am planning to set up a server to run on Ubuntu and attach it to a dotcom domain. I really appreciate your time and patience... and I do thank you in advance for helping me clear some doubts. Many of the web resources I have looked up provides bits and pieces of the information here and there and do not link up the entire picture...
Might be a bit wrong but I think it works like this: Registring the domain You register a domain at some registrar. They do have some kind of contracts with the operators of the root servers. For .com domains that's NetSol. So, basically when you register a domain name you also need to enter the nameservers. E.g. mydomain.com uses as nameservers ns1.myhost.com / ns2.myhost.com. If the nameservers of ns1/ns2.myhost.com don't exist, then glue records are needed. This means that the owner of myhost.com tells the registrar that it's a glue records and that those nameservers can be found on specific IP addresses. E.g. 123.123.123.123 and 123.123.123.124 (normally two different IPs are required for the two different nameservers) All of this information is then added to the root server. Making a dns request Now in your browser you want to surf to mydomain.com. If the domain is also in your dns cache, then first it will check whether the information has expired (most domains are set to about 48h... after that the information will be renewed again by checking on the domain info). If it has not expired then the IP of the actual server where the domain will point to will be retrieved from the cache and you will be directed there. At this point apache (or another webserver or ftp server or ....) comes into play. Apache on the server gets a call for the domain "mydomain.com". It checks its configuration whether it has an entry and if so, then it will display the according pages. If not you get an error. However if the domain info has expired in your cache or if there is no information yet in your cache your computer asks then (normally) your ISPs dns server whether this one has temporarily saved the domain info. If not then it will go up the ladder (I don't know how many steps there are) until you arrive at the root server. If the domain exists then the root server will have an entry and all ladders in between will put the info into the cache... so that not for every request the root server are being queried. At least I think it works like that... or closely like that.
These links might be interesting for you: http://www.howtoforge.com/traditional_dns_howto http://www.howtoforge.com/ispconfig_dns_godaddy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name_system
