Re: DNS Question

( ntboy@mailhost.iconn.net )
Sat, 10 Jan 1998 14:43:05 -0500 (EST)

On Sat, 10 Jan 1998, Steve Coleman wrote:

> If your mail server and web server are on two different machines. How
> do you configure your system to allow both http://www.domain.com and
> http://domain.com to resolve to your web server?
>
> It's my understanding that domain.com must point to your mail server.
> Is this true? If not, how do you configure DNS to resolve MX lookups
> properly?

No, it isn't true.

What i see below doesn't make it clear to me exactly what you are doing
but...
>
> Our DNS DB looks something like this.
>
> domain.com. IN NS ns.domain.com.
>
> domain.com. IN MX mail.domain.com.

You should have an SOA record at the top of your zone file, something
like....
domain.com. IN SOA ns.domain.com. someguy.domain.com (
1998010900 ;serial
7200 ; refresh
3600 ; retry
604800 ; expire
7200 ) ; ttl
....immediately following that, put your NS and MX records like so...
IN NS ns1.domain.com.
IN NS ns2.domain.com.
IN MX 10 smtp1.domain.com.
IN MX 20 smtp2.domain.com.

Then you can assign IPs to domain.com and to your hosts...
domain.com. IN A 111.222.333.444
www IN A 111.222.333.444
smtp1 IN A ...etc

> @ IN A x.x.x.2

I avoid using '@' anywhere...It confuses me and my scripts. DNS is not
the place to be worrying about shorthand...The KISS principle should take
precedence where something is vital. Your milage may vary.

> Allows both http://domain.com and http://www.domain.com to resolve to
> the web server. However, mail services died. MX lookups would show
> www.domain.com as the host.
>
> What do I need to do?

What you need is what 999 out of 1000 others need. Get a copy of DNS&BIND
and go through it (repeatedly if necessary) until you have the concepts
down pat. NT comes with nslookup, so use that to help you with the book.

Apps like 'dig' and 'host' aren't essential, but they are useful and there
must be NT ports of them.

Bill