5. Zone File Creation:

Now there is an issue. :( Where is my shotgun? 

I.e. if you have installed bind-chroot, then you will be creating your domain zone file in /var/named/chroot/var/named/ directory, and then you will make a softlink to the /var/named/ directory, but if you didn't install this chroot package, then you are going to create the zone file directly in the /var/named/ directory.

Now the following command works fine, if you have bind-chroot:

$ vi /var/named/chroot/var/named/cbtcandy.org.zone

OR   (if bind-chroot is not installed)

$ vi /var/named/cbtcandy.org.zone  

and type the following lines into your zone file:

$TTL    86400
@               IN SOA  @ nayyares.gmail.com. (
                                        42              ; serial (d. adams)
                                        3H              ; refresh
                                        15M             ; retry
                                        1W              ; expiry
                                        1D )            ; minimum
@               IN NS           nameserver.cbtcandy.org.
nameserver      IN A            192.168.1.1
cache           IN A            192.168.1.2
www             IN A            192.168.1.3
portal          IN A            192.168.1.4
 

You can add as many records as you wish :) in this file. 

Note: Here I am assuming that our DNS machine name is nameserver and LAN subnet is on 192.168.1.0/24 , you can change this according to your situation.

Now the following step is needed only if you have created the zone file in the /var/names/chroot/var/named/ directory.

$ ln -s /var/named/chroot/var/named/cbtcandy.org.zone /var/named/cbtcandy.org.zone

6.  Editing resolv.conf:

Now to tell our nameserver machine about the order it will look for name resolution, we have to edit /etc/resolv.conf file,

$ vi /etc/resolv.conf

and write the following two lines, but keep them in same order, as we want to first resolve domain resolution query by caching-name server, so we will keep 127.0.0.1 line first, in this file.

nameserver 127.0.0.1
nameserver 212.96.24.1

Note: I assume that your ISP's nameserver machine IP is 212.96.24.1.

7.  Setting Up Host Name:

To set up your hostname according to your domain, we will edit /etc/sysconfig/network file, i.e.

$ vi /etc/sysconfig/network

Now type the following line:

HOSTNAME=nameserver.cbtcandy.org

8. Restarting BIND Daemon:

$ service named restart               (Redhat,Fedora,Centos)

OR

$ /etc/rc.d/rc.bind restart            (Suse,Debian)

9. Testing:

Now to test whether your configuration is working fine or not, give the following command:

$ nslookup nameserver.cbtcandy.org

If you get the following result, this means your BIND 9 is working fine: 

Server:         127.0.0.1
Address:        127.0.0.1#53

Name:   nameserver.cbtcandy.org
Address: 192.168.1.1

Now to test your caching-nameserver, give the following command:

$ nslookup www.howtoforge.org

If you are getting the following result, this means the caching-nameserver is working fine.

Server:         212.96.24.1
Address:        212.96.24.1#53

Name:   www.howtoforge.org
Address: 85.10.207.148

Note: If you find any problem durring configuration, please feel free to contact me.