dns to my own servers???

mmilano

sorry for the off the topic post, but i've been searching information for days and i can't find anything.

i want to host my own sites now, but do not understand the way dns works.

do i have to register to be a name server? i have domain names with verisign and it won't let me point my domains to my ip address.

what do i have to do to be able to point domains to my linux box on my static ip?

any links or references would be greatly apreciated.
thanks
-mike

van__

If you have Linux, you probably already have BIND.

if not, get it here:
http://www.isc.org/products/BIND/

if you do have it, go to that link anyway to read up on setting up a name server.

I don't have time to go into details on this because setting up nameservers is just a tad complex and much depends on what you want to achieve.

Looking for a book on BIND?
Got one right here, DNS and BIND by O'Reilly
good read, lots of action and adventure. Heard they've got that kid from Harry Potter up for the lead role as the geeky network admin with a bad attitude.

mmilano

i thank you so much.. and now i will learn =)

Anon

You are required to provide both primary and secondary nameservers, and it generally is a bad idea to have all of them on your own network. Conventionally what you'd do is run your own primary nameserver and arrange with your Internet connectivity provider to have them host the secondary nameserver. That way, if the line goes down, your records are still accessible. If your Internet provider can also provide a secondary MX server, you will never lose mail during outages because the secondary server can store and forward mail.

Your best move may be to use a commercial DNS provider. I use EasyDNS.com, which is cheap, reliable, and provides me with secondary MX service as well.