[ILUG] caching DNS server for home network

[Nick Murtagh]

On Monday 26 November 2001 11:21, Steffen Higel wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I've decided to get a caching DNS server running on my Debian/alpha box at
> home. I'd also like it to be able to resolve the names of the machines on
> my network back to IP addreses. (they all have a domain suffix of .local).
>
> I had heard good things about djbdns so over the weekend, gave installing
> dnscache a go. After fiddling around with all the djb-isms, I got dns
> cache up and running, but found that after accepting a request to resolve
> a name by a client, it let the query time out... I would have expected it
> to send the query on to one of the Indigo DNS servers, as I had
> 194.125.133.10 in root/servers/@
>
> Having read up a bit more on it now, I realize I'll need to get tiny-dns
> running to act as a nameserver for my local domains. Is this overkill? I'm
> beginning to think so.
>
> My questions are these:
>
> Has anyone here done this before, and did they get it working?

yep, it definitely works.

> Am I making life more difficult for myself by using djbdns, and if so, can
> anyone name a lightweight alternative?

it's worth it in the long run. djbdns _is_ the lightweight alternative :)

you need to do something like this on your DNS server:

Run tinydns on 127.0.0.1. This should contain entries for *.local.
You can test this independently of anything else. Use dig, rather that 
nslookup.

Run dnscachex (i think it should be dnscachex rather than dnscache, can't
remember why though) on your DNS server's local IP address (eg 10.a.b.c).

Tell dnscachex to forward queries for *.local to 127.0.0.1. Tell it to
forward everything else to Indigo.

All your machines point to 10.a.b.c in /etc/resolv.conf or whatever.

et voila!

Let me know if you need more specific stuff. The FAQ on the djbdns site
sort of covers most of this, but a lot of it is implied.

Nick