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 · 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.


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 · Mail: Len Conrad
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Building an NT master nameserver from another nameserver's zones.

If your new BIND8/NT machine's ip address has "zone transfer" permissions at another DNS, ie., in their named.conf they have:

options
{
allow-transfer {yourDNS.ip.add.ress;};
};

.. where all or many of your zones are currently hosted (say on an MS NT DNS, or your ISP, or your hosting service), then rather than you manually creating the db.domain.com files on you DNS, you can use BIND/NT's named-xfer.exe command line utility to transfer the zone files from another server to the BIND8/NT "master" server your are bringing up.

  • Set up your master BIND/NT named.conf with all the

    zone "anydomain.com" IN {file "db.anydomain.com";  type  "master";  etc.};

    statements. Got 25 zones? that's 25 zone statements in named.conf. I keep my zone statements on one line so copy-line/paste-line allows me to clone-a-zone easily. (note: zone-per-line isn't practical if you're going to be telnetting into the NT machine, but for text editors line HomeSite or NotePad, zone-per-line is practical.)

  • At the NT command prompt and dns\bin directory, type named-xfer to see the command line options.

  • Build a batch file with one named-xfer command per line, where the named-xfer options will transfer a zone file from the other nameserver to yours and to the same file name as you have put in your named.conf. Here's a sample line from my batch file called suckzones.bat. Run it in the dns\etc directory so the files are transferred there:

    ..\bin\named-xfer -z anydomain.com -f db.anydomain.com
          -t sucktrace.log servers ip.ad.re.ss

  • Run the batch file. The zone files will transferred from the other DNS to your BIND8/NT DNS. Check in sucktrace.log to make sure everybody arrived.

  • For the ones that arrive, you know the syntax is cool because named-xfer program wouldn't have written bad syntax, would it?
  • Stop and start your BIND8/NT so that named reads in the newly arrived db. zone files.

  • You now have a new master DNS.