From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Jun 26 21:59:41 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id VAA04157 for questions-outgoing; Thu, 26 Jun 1997 21:59:41 -0700 (PDT) Received: from spacehog.structured.net (spacehog.structured.net [206.58.33.145]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id VAA04151 for ; Thu, 26 Jun 1997 21:59:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: from spacehog.structured.net (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by spacehog.structured.net (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id WAA07726; Thu, 26 Jun 1997 22:00:33 GMT Message-ID: <33B2E681.6DB3E157@spacehog.structured.net> Date: Thu, 26 Jun 1997 22:00:33 +0000 From: Justin Ashworth Reply-To: ashworth@cs.montana.edu Organization: Pretty cruddy X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.0b5C (X11; I; FreeBSD 3.0-970209-SNAP i386) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Lee Johnston CC: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Mail Host, POP & DNS Config X-Priority: 3 (Normal) References: <33B2BD13.EE398FDA@cyberworld.demon.co.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-questions@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Lee Johnston wrote: > I setup DNS, HTTP and FTP servers on the FreeBSD PC > (ser.whickhamcomp.ac.uk). All of these work fine, but yesterday I > decided to try and setup a SMTP & POP server. > > I added these lines to my DNS Zone file: > > new2.whickhamcomp.ac.uk. A 192.168.1.2 > MX 10 ser.whickhamcomp.ac.uk. > new3.whickhamcomp.ac.uk A 192.168.1.3 > MX 10 ser.whickhamcomp.ac.uk. > > This worked fine, users could collect mail using POP, and send using > SMTP. The only problem was that to send mail to a user on the network I > needed to use the following format for email address: > > [user]@ser.whickhamcomp.ac.uk > > I wanted the email address to be in this format: > > [user]@whickhamcomp.ac.uk > > To do this I added this line to my DNS Zone file: > > whickhamcomp.ac.uk. IN A 192.168.1.1 > > Is this the correct way of doing this? My theory is that if it works, it's the right way to do it. :) As a matter of personal preference and cleanliness, here is how I would set up your zone file: [ ... ] IN MX 0 ser.whickhamcomp.ac.uk. IN A 192.168.1.1 ser IN A 192.168.1.1 mail IN A 192.168.1.1 www IN A 192.168.1.1 ftp IN A 192.168.1.1 new2 IN A 192.168.1.2 new3 IN A 192.168.1.3 The lack of a period after the ser, new2, and new3 hostnames will append the FQD (fully-qualified domain name). Thus, with no hostname in the entry above ser, you will just have the fqd. There's a good book by O'Reilly called "DNS & Bind". If you're just starting to administer a name server, I strongly recommend you at least take a look at it. > Also, we may be using the same FreeBSD PC as a gateway to the internet > through a permanent ISDN line in the future. How would we make our DNS > server available to external clients on the internet so people outside > of our network could resolve our IP address from our Domain name > (ser.whickhamcomp.ac.uk)? Whatever agency handles the .uk top-level domain should have a database that contains information about which name server to point to. If you haven't already, you will need to register your domain with that agency and have them point all queries on your domain to your name server. Hope this helped... -- ---------------------------------------------------------------- Justin Ashworth, Intern Structured Network Systems justin@structured.net http://www.structured.net ---------------------------------------------------------------- Critic, n.: A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody tries to please him. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"