A little useful information for Bind Name Server daemon services.

Bind is the Berkeley Internet Name Domain server daemon and is the most common DNS server on the internet. Others exist, but this is the one I've been using both on cPanel and non-cPanel servers.

Useful Links: Check ROOT Servers for Authoritative/Child Name Servers | DNS Check: Nabber - IntoDNS | DNS Settings |

Useful Commands:

• service named reload - reloads the zone files
• named-checkzone domain.com ./path/to/domain.com.db (checks the zone file validity)

DNS Configuration

• Modify cPanel templates to have correct TTLs; add cpanel, webmail, webdisk, but NOT whm (for resellers only), use CNAMES (new server uses standardvirtualftp, old servers used standard, probably a setting somewhere as to which is used)
• Setup Server DNS zones
  • Each domain should have a zone file and then add reference in the named.conf
  • If additional IPs, add them, too
  • Main server should have no MX and SPF setup to be "v=spf1 -all"
  • Setup zones for Nameservers (if any)
  • cPanel primary domains should have cpanel, webmail, webdisk (and whm for resellers) setup
• Add/Update child name servers at registry (if appropriate)

Files:

• Config: /etc/named.conf; /etc/resolv.conf
• Zones: /var/named (domain.com.db)

A few notes (all numbers are in seconds):

• $TTL XX - (I use 14400) users default TTL if not specified.
• @ XX IN SOA NS1.DOMAIN.EXT admin.DOMAIN.EXT (5 numbers), XX is default TTL
• 1st - revision - format as YYYYMMDDXX - date with XX being the revision number in the day.
• 2nd - refresh - how often the secondary server checks the primary server for updates (i use 14400, change to low to move)
• 3rd - retry - how long the secondary server should wait to retry the primary server if a query fails (i use 1800); less than refresh number
• 4th - expire - how long secondary server can use old data if unable to query primary server (i use 1209600)
• 5th - minimum TTL - how long to remember queries that don't exist in the DNS (i use 600)

Seconds Reference:

• 14400 - 4 hours
• 86400 - 24 hours
• 1209600 - 2 weeks

rDNS Configuration

rDNS, or reverse DNS must be setup by the owners of the IP; they can either do it themselves or delegate it to you. You will have to add the DNS entries into the appropriate zone.