DNS and BIND, Amazon.com, US$30.36. If you appreciate Len's BIND8NT site, please link from here to order your copy of the book.

 @ Overview, Support, Keys
 · Downloads
 · Installing
 · Configuration
 · Operations
 · Upgrade from BIND4
 · Run a Public DNS
 · Is My Reverse Perverse?
 · Is My DNS a Mess?
 · BIND News
 · CERT Advisory: BIND!
 · Resources
 · Bugs in BIND8 for NT



Other Sites by Len Conrad

 · IMGate
A site that shows how to build and configure, using Open Source software (FreeBSD and postfix), relay-only mail hubs to add aggressive anti-spam defenses and increased reliabiilty and througput to Imail sites. Note that the IMGate approach is not dependent on Ipswitch Imail and so is applicable to any other brand of mail server.



Copywright agreement:

The relationship between the topic of DNS and BIND and the images of a cricket and a locust are trademarks of O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. Used with permission.



 · Mail: Len Conrad

ISC BIND 8 for NT: Quick & Dirty

Site by: Len Conrad
NIC: CL1352
RIPE: LC2042-RIPE
MEI
Levallois-Perret, France



From:              "Cricket Liu" < cricket@acmebw.com>
To:                  "Len Conrad" < LenConrad@MEIway.com>
Subject:           Bind on NT
Date:               Sun, 23 Apr 2000 10:52:18 -0600
Organization:  Acme Byte & Wire LLC

Hey, thanks, Len! That's a great resource. I'll start
pointing people there.

cricket



Site Overview

Just a little web site to help NT admins get BIND 8.2.3 operating on NT 4, with one DNS master server and one DNS slave server. (strictly speaking, master and slave really apply to the level of individual zones, not to a namesever.) I have helped about 30 people get their NT BIND running via email, so it's time to formalize my experiences for others.

Up front and right at the top, recognition and thanks to ...

Danny Mayer

... for contributing the NT4/W2K port of BIND 8.2.3.

Please note that the BIND 8.2.3 available on this site is compiled without modification from the ISC BIND source code, so it is as "official" as can be. ie, the BIND here is not a private or customized port nor a commercial product.

This BIND8NT site serves only as a distribution site for the NT4 BIND8 installable binary that is NOT provided by the official www.ISC.org site (they supply only source code).


When I say "quick & dirty", I mean I will take you to the point where you will have BIND8 installed and verified as functional on NT.

I do not mean that I will cover here all the configuration details to get BIND/NT actually running on your site. But with my example config files, I think your BIND/NT could be up and running in under 30 minutes.

In the download section, I provide:
  • the BIND 8.2.3 installable binary for NT and

  • template files (in NT text format) for all the key BIND config files. I follow the file name conventions in "the cricket book". I advise you not to be gratuitously innovative and re-invent your own file names for standard BIND files. Here's a place where innovation is not welcome.
These files must be modified to create a functioning BIND DNS host.

My objective is to help your get your BIND/NT running so that you can do the detailed configuration yourself.

Support

There isn't any BIND8 support offered here!! WYSIWYG rules, OK!

The Internet Software Consortium is responsible for BIND and runs an active BIND users mailing list. Join that list and ask away.

Above all, support yourself by buying "the cricket book" seen in the upper left of this page, DNS and BIND, 3rd edition, O'Reilly. This book is essential, is the bible for BIND 4 and 8.

If you appreciate this free site and plan to buy the book, I'd appreciate you clicking through to Amazon.com from my links here. Merci beaucoup.

By the way, if you plan to implement Win2000 DNS later, then you're maybe wondering about installing BIND/NT now, or, why buy the cricket book? Here's why:

I recently helped an ISP who was a little rusty on DNS to get BIND8/NT running as a slave to his Win2000 master DNS. It was my first encounter with Win2000 DNS, and I can say I wouldn't have understood anything if I hadn't already been familiar with BIND8 terminology and concepts. MS has used pretty much the same terms and provides the pretty much the same functionality in Win2000 DNS as you find in ISC BIND8.

So learning BIND8 on NT is not wasted time, quite the contrary. It smarts you up on industry-standard DNS terms and operations so you can resist the MS dumb down. I mean, ISC BIND is pervasive and you will have to deal with machines and people who do run it, sooner or later.

My brief W2K DNS experience indicated to me, personally, that I wouldn't want to manage a 1000 zones via MS Management Console and tabbed dialogs any more than I'd want to manage 1000 virtual HTTP servers via MMC (1000 of anything is obviously a database problem, not a GUI unsortable/unFINDable list problem), but to each his poison.

Key Points

  • BIND8 for NT uses the same text configuration files as BIND8 for Unix, so your Unix contacts will be right at home with BIND8/NT and/or they can help you with BIND8/NT.
    (Note: if you copy BIND config files from a *nix box to NT, be aware that *nix newline codes are not the same as NT newline codes. Not fatal, but you do have clean them up in Notepad or similar editor.s)

  • BIND 8 runs on NT4, server or workstation, with 32 megs RAM, as an NT service. 64 megs would be more comfortable, for sure.

  • If you already have a DNS running (NT's MS DNS or your upstream has been providing you DNS that you are bringing in-house), then you can "zone transfer" the zone files from another DNS to your BIND/NT master nameserver, saving a lot of typing and typo's.

  • BIND8/NT can serve as master or slave to Larry Kahn's NT4 BIND4, to MS NT4 DNS, or to MS Win2000 DNS, or IBM AIX, or just about any mfr's version of BIND.

    Example:  At the ISP mentioned above, his Win2000 DNS NOTIFY's his BIND8/NT when he changes a zone's serial number on W2K. BIND8/NT responds to the NOTIFY and requests a zone transfer of the new zone file from W2K to the BIND/NT config directory. All of these two-way DNS interactions between W2K DNS and BIND8/NT worked smoothly and immediately.

  •