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Chapter 16. Berkeley Internet Name Domain (BIND)

statements are listed is important, as the first

view

statement that matches a particular client's IP

address is used.

See Section 16.4.2 for more information about the

view

statement.

  zone " zone name "

  Specifies particular zones for which this nameserver is authoritative.

A

A

The

zone

statement is primarily used to specify the file containing the zone's configuration and

pass certain options about that zone to

named

that override other global

option

statements used in

/etc/named.conf

.

The name of the zone is important, as it is the default value assigned to the

$ORIGIN

directive used

in the zone file and is appended to non FQDNs. So, for example, if this

zone

statement defines the

namespace for

domain.com

, you should use

domain.com

as the

zone name

so it will be

A

A

placed at the end of hostnames used in the zone file.

The most common

zone

statement options include:

allow query

  Specifies the clients that are allowed to request information about this zone.

The default is to allow all query requests.

allow transfer

  Specifies the slave servers that are allowed to request a transfer of the

zone's information. The default is to allow all transfer requests.

allow update

  Specifies the hosts that are allowed to dynamically update information in

their zone. The default is to deny all dynamic update requests.

Be very careful about allowing hosts to update information about their zone. Do not enable this

option unless the host specified is completely trusted. It is generally better to have an adminis 

trator manually update the zone's records and reload the

named

service, if possible.

file

  Specifies the name of the file in the

named

working directory that contains the zone's

configuration data. The default is

/var/named

.

masters

  Used if the zone is defined as a slave

type

. The

masters

option tells a slave's

named

the IP addresses from which to request authoritative zone information.

notify

  Works in a similar manner to the

notify

option used with the

option

statement.

type

  Defines the type of zone. The following types may be used:

forward

  Tells the nameserver to forward all requests for information about this zone to

other nameservers.

hint

  A special type of zone that is used to point to the root nameservers, which are used to

resolve queries when a zone is not otherwise known. You should not need to configure a hint

zone beyond the default in

/etc/named.conf

.

master

  Designates this nameserver as authoritative for this zone. A zone should be set as

the

master

type if you have the zone's configuration files on this system.

slave

  Designates this nameserver as a slave server for this zone, telling

named

to request

the zone's configuration files from the master nameserver's IP address for that zone.

zone statistics

  Tells

named

to keep statistics concerning this zone, writing them to ei 

ther the default location (

/var/named/named.stats

) or the place specially designated by the

statistics file

option in the

server

statement, if it exists.

16.2.1.1. Sample Zone Statements

Most changes to the

/etc/named.conf

file of a master or slave nameserver involves adding, mod 

ifying, or deleting

zone

statements. While these

zone

statements can contain many options, most