DNS on LAN

[Kevin D. Kinsey, DaleCo, S.P.]

David Pratt wrote:

> Hi. I have just set up a small LAN.  I am using an old pentium 
> computer as a firewall using IPCop (192.168.1.1) as a gateway to the 
> web.  It uses a dynamic IP from my ISP so all the machines have web 
> access.  I have 3 other machines behind the firewall.  I have set up a 
> FreeBSD 4.9 server (192.168.1.2) that I want to use to develop and 
> test my PHP and Python applications.  The other machines (a Mac and 
> Windows machine) obtain their IP between 192.168.200 - 192.168.250.  I 
> have a domain name registered that is currently pointing to a host 
> that I am using for my live site.
>
> So question is how to use my domain name behind my firewall in my LAN 
> with my server for  development. I don't know how to do this. I want 
> to be able to get my server on my browser something like this: 
> server01.mydomain.com. ( mydomain substituted for my actual domain)
>
> I have read the DNS chapter in the FreeBSD book but I am just as 
> confused as ever in what I need to do to achieve this.  I have named 
> my server the following:  server01  and in my original configuration 
> when I installed FreeBSD provided a fully qualified name of 
> server01.mydomain.com  (mydomain substituted for my actual domain).
>
> my hostname file currently looks like this:
>
> ::1                     localhost
> 127.0.0.1               localhost
> 192.168.1.2             server01  server01.mydomain.com
>
> when I type hostname at command line I get server01.mydomain.com
>
> I have this line in my rc.conf  file from the original installation:
>
> hostname="server01.mydomain.com"
>
> Any help greatly appreciated.
>
> Regards,
> Dave
>

The easiest thing to do to
get this up & working with
a LAN that small --- just tell
Windows and Mac OS the
IP "192.168.1.2" is
"myserver01.mydomain.com"
in their hosts files.  IIRC, in
Win9x that's %SYSTEMDIR%/hosts
(which can be copied from hosts.sam
or even the /etc/hosts on your FreeBSD
box, if you convert the newlines from
Unix LF to DOS CR/LF, and
/windows/system32/drivers/etc/hosts
on XP...

If you really want to set up a
DNS server for this purpose,
read the handbook again,
and look for some tutorials.

You must edit the following
files (and do it *right*)

/etc/namedb/named.boot
/etc/namedb/named.conf
/etc/namedb/mydomain.com.hosts

And make sure that named(8)
is running. 

Finally, for exhaustive ;-) info: check the
manpages for ndc(8), named(8),
named.conf(5), gethostbyname(3),
hostname(7), kill(1), resolver(3),
resolver(5), signal(3), RFC 882, RFC 883,
RFC 973, RFC 974, RFC 1033,
RFC 1034, RFC 1035, RFC 1123,
and RFC 2308 ``Name Server
Operations Guide for BIND''
nslookup(8), dig(1)...

HTH, and isn't too bewildering....

Kevin Kinsey
DaleCo, S.P.