Date: Sun, 2 Sep 2001 23:03:49 -0700 From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: "Tony" <tony@idk.com>, <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: how to specifiy nameserver Message-ID: <000501c1343e$3357e6e0$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> In-Reply-To: <200109030317.UAA00713@idk.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
>-----Original Message----- >From: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG >[mailto:owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG]On Behalf Of Tony >Sent: Sunday, September 02, 2001 8:17 PM >To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG >Subject: Re: how to specifiy nameserver > > >> >> >-----Original Message----- >> >From: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG >> >[mailto:owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG]On Behalf Of Tony >> >> >> >> Depends on what books you look at. The authoritative reference about >> >> DNS has always been for me "DNS & Bind" by O' Reilly & Associates. >> >> >> > >> >You missed it, I said "any other book I have". Unlike some people who can >> >afford to run out and spend $50 (or whatever) or a book, read it, find all >> >the answers; I cannot do that. >> > >> > >This is not a LAME excuse as you state. When one if disabled, not working, >every $ counts. I have great trouble reading and remembering what I read 5 >pages ago. > Most libraries are free last I checked. And if your having trouble remembering what you read then how are you going to remember an answer that you have to read off the computer screen? What's the difference between an e-mail message and a book? ---begin rant, with apologies to the list----------- And as far as every dollar counting - well what I can say about that is that we all make financial choices in our lives. When you say that you don't have the money for a book, what your really saying is that you have money - but you don't consider a book valuable enough to you to spend any of it on it. I've been in the position before right out of High School where I was working for minimum wage, living on my own, and I literally ran my checkbook down to the last few dollars every month because I had so little money because of my expenses. But I found over the years that there's always a way to cut expenses and there's always a way to raise income. As far as cutting expenses well maybe you end up not living in a place you would prefer to live, maybe you don't buy the kind of food you would prefer to eat, maybe you don't own a car and you move next to your job. I lived like this for several years until I finally decided that I was too lazy to do what needed to be done to really cut out all the toys in my life and live simply and within my meagre means - so I did the only thing you can do in that circumstance and I adjusted the other end of the equation by working my ass off and building a career for myself that paid out more money. I could have done it the other way and really adjusted my lifestyle to live simply - plenty of other people have done that too, I see them wandering around the little cafe's up in NorthWest 21st with their pierced jewelry, tee shirts, and tattoos, living 10 people to a rented house, washing dishes, and claiming they are the ultimate anti-establishment folks, and there's nothing wrong with that either as long as it makes them happy. And, before I hear the next thing, well I've been out on long term disability too, with limited income, and a lot of concern that I wouldn't ever be able to do my work again. But I lived through that too and I didn't do it by feeling sorry for myself. We all have the hands that Providence dealt us and we must live with them, and we can either be happy or be unhappy, it's all the same to the Fates that deal that hand to us. It does make a great deal of difference to us, though. I choose to be happy. You should too. -----------end rant---------------------------- Anyway, DNS is documented in the RFC's too - that's after all what the DNS & Bind book refers to as it's authoratative source. And the RFC's are available online. >This kind of point to book, book page number, man pag is somewhat useful, >but it would also be useful to answer the question. > The answer to your question "what is the zone file format" is way too convoluted and complicated to answer in an e-mail message. There's at least 6 different ways to write a zone file that mean the same thing. This is not trivial. You can use programs like webmin, or scripts like h2n to generate zone files but how do you know that they are right? Hell, we just started using webmin at the ISP for the less experienced admins to make zone entries and I've already sent 6 corrections back to the author of it because of things that the bind module in webmin was doing wrong. And to top it off the syntax that webmin spews out is horrible - it's easy to parse for a perl script, and it's digestible by named, but it's awful for a human to read. It would be like trying to lean HTML by examining the output of Microsoft Front Page. >> >> You can also check your library or a library of a university or school near >> you. >> > >And if something "read" is not understood, when then? Since it is then a >loop with being referred back to the book. > Then you read a DIFFERENT book that covers the same topic in the hopes that the author explains it a different way that you can understand. And if that doesen't work you keep trying different books, and if you exhaust all the books on the topic then you find a mentor or teacher that you can work with. I agree that everyone learns differently and some don't learn well from the printed page. But, E-mail is the printed page and so if you can't learn from a book your not going to be able to learn from e-mail. And it's unfair to ask people here to create reams of personalized e-mail for a subject this complicated. Not only that but this isn't the forum for it anyway - there are entire forums devoted just to DNS. >I have been using/configuring/etc name servers since 1994, just never did it >a Unix system and pointed it to someplace else. I guess I should not ask >"how to" questions on this list that are too narrow .. tons of NATD, >install, questions get answers (they also get pointed to man pages, books, >etc). > This is good advice - and it's very polite to ask if there is a more specific forum that would be better for non-FreeBSD questions. This list is for questions related to FreeBSD. Bind, and DNS are NOT specific to FreeBSD and operate just about the same on any UNIX platform. DNS is also complicated and it's easy to make errors, God knows I've seen plenty of DNS errors created at other ISP's, and I've made a few myself creating zone files, and I've also been doing it since 1994 - and ON UNIX, by hand, WITHOUT a tool. And speaking of off-topic posting, I can't count the number of times people ask/argue questions here on Sendmail - but this is totally inappropriate as there's an entire newsgroup just for sendmail, as well as tons of FAQ's on the Sendmail sites. 99% of the Sendmail questions asked here have absolutely nothing to do with FreeBSD and would be completely applicable to Sendmail on any other platform. Ted Mittelstaedt tedm@toybox.placo.com Author of: The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide Book website: http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com >> Frankly, some version of DNS and BIND should be required reading for anyone >> setting up a nameserver. Misconfigured nameservers can annoy many other >> people on the Internet, they are not something you set up first then learn >> about later. >> >> Ted Mittelstaedt >tedm@toybox.placo.com >> Author of: The FreeBSD Corporate >Networker's Guide >> Book website: http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com > > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?000501c1343e$3357e6e0$1401a8c0>