Zone file "@" definition

[JudgementDay]

In my zone file, I have:

 

@ IN NS ns1.mydomain.com.

@ IN A 202.191.52.135

@ IN AAAA ::1

IN MX 10 mydomain.com.

ns1 IN NS 202.191.52.135

www IN A 202.191.52.135

 

What does "@" indicate?

[kicken]

It stands for the domain itself, without and subdomains. I think technically it is an alias for something defined elsewhere but I cannot remember the details at the moment.  As a general case though, it representing the domain is true.

 

 

In a zone file for mydomain.com:

@ IN A 192.168.0.1

 

would mean that 'mydomain.com' points at that address. 

 

 

[JudgementDay]

Thats what I thought also.

 

In that case can line 2 be removed from here (ns1  IN  NS  202.191.52.135)?

 

@  IN  NS  ns1.mydomain.com

ns1  IN  NS  202.191.52.135

[kicken]

I don't really know if a record like ns1 IN NS ns1.mydomain.com is needed.  I'm not that familiar with NS records.  I've only done a few basic dns configurations, and have not done that for quite a while.

 

 

You would need an A record to define what ns1.mydomain.com resolves to. @ only covers the base domain, it does not act as a wildcard for all subdomains.  For that you would use *.

 

 

@ IN A xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

 

would point mydomain.com to that ip, but www.mydomain.com would still be non-existent and not resolve unless you define it or define *.

[JudgementDay]

Thats a good point you have made.

 

I could remove them in every combination and see what happens, but I don't have time to wait around for my ISP's DNS to update its cache.

 

Man I wish I was a teenager again.