Archive:Docs/Drafts/AdministrationGuide/Servers/DNSBIND/BINDCache

DNS and BIND

Cache-only Nameserver

A cache-only nameserver does not hold authoritative information for a zone or a domain. Instead, it performs recursive queries, and caches the results. This results in less network traffic for commonly accessed websites.

To use BIND as a cache-only nameserver:

• run the following command as root to install the caching-nameserver package:

yum install caching-nameserver

• After the caching-nameserver package is installed, two configuration files, /etc/named.rfc1912.zones and /etc/named.caching-nameserver.conf are created. As well, the /var/named/ directory is populated with sample zone database files.

• run the following command as root to remove the /etc/rndc.key file:

rm /etc/rndc.key

• run the following command as root to generate the rndc.conf file:

/usr/sbin/rndc-confgen

• the output will be similar to the following:

key "rndckey" {
algorithm hmac-md5;
secret "MpmPgP8WfwJsOEFehaJvEA==";
};

options {
default-key "rndckey";
default-server 127.0.0.1;
default-port 953;
};

#

• copy the section between # Start of rndc.conf and # End of rndc.conf, and save it as /etc/rndc.conf. Using the example output above, the /etc/rndc.conf file would look as follows:

key "rndckey" {
algorithm hmac-md5;
secret "MpmPgP8WfwJsOEFehaJvEA==";
};

options {
default-key "rndckey";
default-server 127.0.0.1;
default-port 953;
};

• copy the section between # Use with the following in named.conf and # End of named.conf, into the /etc/named.caching-nameserver.conf file. Using the example output above, the following section would be added to the /etc/named.caching-nameserver.conf file:

key "rndckey" {
algorithm hmac-md5;
secret "MpmPgP8WfwJsOEFehaJvEA==";
};

controls {
inet 127.0.0.1 port 953
allow { 127.0.0.1; } keys { "rndckey"; };
};

• for further rndc configuration details, please refer to the Configuring and Using the rndc tool section.
• to start named, run the following command as root:

service named start

Permissions

Run the following commands as root to set the correct mode, and user and group ownership for each file:

chown named:named /etc/named.caching-nameserver.conf; chown named:named /etc/named.rfc1912.zones

chmod 600 /etc/named.caching-nameserver.conf; chmod 600 /etc/named.rfc1912.zones

The zone database files in the /var/named/ directory, such as localdomain.zone, and localhost.zon, have read and write permissions by default. For security, it is recommended that these files are read-only. To make these files read-only, run the following command as root:

chmod 400 localdomain.zone  localhost.zone  named.broadcast  named.ca  named.ip6.local  named.local  named.zero

Administration Guide - TOC

Previous Page - Running BIND in a chroot jail

Next Page - DNS and Mail