DNS Setup

If you want to run RavenCore as a DNS server, you need to establish yourself with a registrar. Go to the domain registrar you have your domain name with, and register your nameservers:

ns1.yourdomain.com
ns2.yourdomain.com

Substitute "yourdomain.com" with your domain.

You MUST have two IP addresses for this, as most registrar's wont let two DNS servers point to the same IP address. If you only have one server, you can bind two static IP addresses to it and have both nameservers point there. You won't have any failover on DNS, but it will at least get you up and running.

Now you set up DNS in RavenCore. I should first mention that the RavenCore DNS manager isn't very user friendly. It does exactly what you "tell" it to, not nessisarily what you "want" it to. It can take some knowledge about DNS to make it work. Hopefully, this guide will help you with the basics and with getting started.

When you create DNS for your domain(s), it first asks you for your SOA (Start of Authority) record.

SOA: ns1.mydomain.com.

(Don't forget the dot at the end!)

In order for your zone file to be created on the server, you are required to have both an "A" record and a "NS" record. Set them up as follows:

record name: @
record type: A
record value: your.server.ip.address

record name: @
record type: NS
record value: ns1.yourdomain.com.

( Don't forget the dot at the end!!! )

Two things to consider here:

• The "@" symbol represents the domain you're creating records for. It's what bind uses, and it makes global DNS options easier to setup. Whenever you see the @ symbol, just think of it as "this domain".
• Don't forget the dot at the end!!! In DNS, a FQDN (fully qualified domain name) ends with a dot. If you don't have a "." at the end, bind will append the FQDN to it.

If you forget to have the dot at the end, you'll have your nameserver putting out names like this:

record name: www.ravencore.com

actual result: www.ravencore.com.ravencore.com

It basically appends the domain name to the record. It may seem real strange, but there is reasoning behind the madness. It makes simplifying your records possible. See the following example:

record name: www
record type: CNAME
record value: @

This means, for whatever this domain is for, make the subdomain "www" be a CNAME (alias) of the domain. See this example:

[root@hawk ~]# host www.yahoo.com
www.yahoo.com is an alias for www.yahoo.akadns.net.
www.yahoo.akadns.net has address 209.131.36.158

And as you can see from the command above, the FQDN is reported with a dot at the end. So this "dot at the end" for a FQDN isn't a RavenCore thing, it's just how DNS is!! So we all just have to deal with the weirdness.

Now, to set up the rest of the DNS entries you might need, below are some examples:

Mail Servers

record name: @
record type: MX-10
record value: mail

Webmail server

record name: webmail
record type: CNAME
record value: @

And you should be all set. Displaying your zone file, it should look something similar to this:

$TTL 300

@ IN SOA ns1.yourdomain.com. nsadmin.yourdomain.com. (
			    2006080957 ; Serial
			    10800 ; Refresh
			    3600 ; Retry
			    604800 ; Expire
                            86400 ) ; Minimum

@                   IN      A       192.168.0.11
yourdesktop         IN      A       192.168.0.101
ns1                 IN      A       192.168.0.6
ns2                 IN      A       192.168.1.6
webmail             IN      CNAME   @
www                 IN      CNAME   @
mail                IN      CNAME   @
@                   IN      MX 10   mail
@                   IN      NS      ns1
@                   IN      NS      ns2

If you have any questions, comments, or improvements to make in this document, please tell me.