4 ms·

At what level do you want to understand things? I feel that getting the basics is best done by trying it out yourself, though a badly configured public server c

At what level do you want to understand things? I feel that getting the basics is best done by trying it out yourself, though a badly configured public server can be used to attack other people, so be mindful of who has access to your server when you're trying things out. If you just want the theory, Wikipedia is a pretty good resource for technical things. If you just want to see how DNS works, set up a server yourself. You could start with a simple caching one like unbound, and then get yourself a domain and set up a real server (eg. nsd or bind) for that. You could for example use Hurricane Electric's free DNS service as your main nameservers and make use of zone transfers and notifications to keep things up-to-date from your local server, giving you a small-scale "real-world" DNS setup.

TeMPOraL 9y ago
> At what level do you want to understand things? What I know: DNS is a server that translates domains to IP addresses. A DNS entry maps domain name to some various properties like "A entry", "AAA entry", "CNAME entry", etc., most of which I don't know what they do. DNS servers are linked together by magic, to provide a somewhat-eventually-consistent global domain->IP mapping. What I want to know: How the whole thing works, what DNS properties ("entries") mean exactly and why, and eventually how to run my own DNS server. Thanks for the tips, sounds like a good starting point.
VexorLoophole 9y ago
And what if i somehow landed a job at a small office without any expert knowledge (only from tinkering with my own unix machines since years) and now i need to set up a simple DNS in a virutal machine of us ? We have all clients in one network. So i really need only a simple DNS without any complex setup. But sadly i cant find any good tutorial what i have to expect and be aware of. All i can find are some three line tutorials (do this and then this and here you go, now you have a DNS), but not more. Cant you point me to some good guide ?
- icebraining 9y ago
  dnsmasq is simple enough. If you just need to define some local names, you can literally just install it and configure those addresses in /etc/hosts on the same machine. The server will pick them up automatically and serve them as A records.

TeMPOraL 9y ago

> At what level do you want to understand things? What I know: DNS is a server that translates domains to IP addresses. A DNS entry maps domain name to some various properties like "A entry", "AAA entry", "CNAME entry", etc., most of which I don't know what they do. DNS servers are linked together by magic, to provide a somewhat-eventually-consistent global domain->IP mapping. What I want to know: How the whole thing works, what DNS properties ("entries") mean exactly and why, and eventually how to run my own DNS server. Thanks for the tips, sounds like a good starting point.

VexorLoophole 9y ago

And what if i somehow landed a job at a small office without any expert knowledge (only from tinkering with my own unix machines since years) and now i need to set up a simple DNS in a virutal machine of us ? We have all clients in one network. So i really need only a simple DNS without any complex setup. But sadly i cant find any good tutorial what i have to expect and be aware of. All i can find are some three line tutorials (do this and then this and here you go, now you have a DNS), but not more. Cant you point me to some good guide ?

icebraining 9y ago
dnsmasq is simple enough. If you just need to define some local names, you can literally just install it and configure those addresses in /etc/hosts on the same machine. The server will pick them up automatically and serve them as A records.