Help with NameServers.

[ChrisMartino]

Hey there, I've heard about something called 'BIND', But not entirely sure what it is, I've looked it up but not too many good tutorials, So heres my question.

 

How would i install nameservers, I have bought two IP's from my host on my vps, 1 main one, 2 others.

 

How would i set this up so i can forward my domain to those nameservers then set the domain up to go to its own directory, Eg. /home/example.com

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated as i have been looking for quite some time now.

[ChrisMartino]

Anybody?

[corbin]

Hmmmm, I think you misunderstand nameservers a little bit.

 

 

A nameserver in the context that you mean it is exactly the same as a DNS server, just at a different level.

 

Apache is what controls what directory is served, not a nameserver.  A nameserver controls what IP address a hostname resolves to.

 

 

Basically you'll need to setup named based virtual hosts on Apache (very easy...  There's probably even a template config file around your system somewhere if you used apt or yum or something).  And then you'll need to configure your DNS stuff.

 

 

With the nameserver stuff, you'll need to tell a higher level DNS server where to send requests for your server and then you'll need to configure your nameserver to resolve requests.

 

 

The following should explain:

 

http://www.howstuffworks.com/dns.htm

http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum23/3009.htm

 

 

Basically you'll need to create a record with a registrar so your nameservers can be resolved then you'll need to set up records on your nameserver.

[cpace1983]

Also, most domain registrars will offer to handle your DNS for you.  They offer an easy to use graphical interface for adding/deleting subdomains, and offer better reliability (usually) than what your VPS could provide.

[gizmola]

I'll attempt to explain a complicated topic without writing a novel.

 

All DNS servers do is convert domain names (www.yourdomain.com) to IP addresses. 

 

How this works in practicality is that when someone types in a domain name into a piece of software, the resolver breaks it apart and sends off some messages to servers to figure out what server can provide what they need to know (the IP Address)

 

They start this way:

 

www.yourdomain.com 

 

Pick off the top level domain (.com)  and query the "Root servers for .com" to find out the Name servers for "yourdomain".

 

The root servers are the ones that the domain name registrar interact with, and it's their responsibility to update them as to the list of nameservers for the domain.  You have to use your registrar any time you want to update your list of nameservers.  You must have at least 2, but on your side only one of them will be the "Master". 

 

So your list might be:

  ns1.yourdomain.com 10.1.1.1

  ns2.yourdomain.com 10.1.1.2

 

The root servers send this information back, and the client then sends requests to all the DNS servers in the list.  Once it gets an answer back that indicates the IP address for the host it's looking for, the program goes on its merry way, using the IP address it has for all future tcp/ip communication.

 

Now here is where Bind would come into play.  Bind is one piece of software that provides nameserver functionality.  On the "master" server, you have to configure the nameserver with zone files for any of your domains.  I won't go into the format of these at all, but they are the files that configure your domain, and associate the names and types of servers in yourdomain.com with IP addresses.  So typically you might have an IP address for yourdomain.com, that also aliases to www.yourdomain.com and associates them with the IP address 10.1.1.2.

 

Once the master is configured properly, you configure any additional name servers to act as slaves.  You have to do some setup on the master as well, but once it's done slaves will pull the zone files from the master, so that any of the slave servers can answer questions for the domain.

 

Control panels provide config tools that hide a lot of this complexity, but allow you basically to set up the zone files for a domain and provide DNS answers. Since you have 2 IP's you can certainly use your server to setup the 2 required dns name servers if you want. 

 

Cpace1983 makes a valid point, that the performance and reliability of dns servers you run yourself will not be as good as companies that have a more robust dns infrastructure in place.