Setting Up the Boot File

The contents of the boot file varies, depending on the type of server. This section describes boot files for primary, secondary, and caching-only servers.

The boot file must be called named.boot. The server's initialization script, /etc/init.d/inetsvc, expects to find /etc/named.boot when it looks for the in.named daemon boot file. The script will not start the daemon if you name the boot file anything else.

Example 13-2 Example Master Boot File for a Primary Server

; named.boot file on the dnsmastr
; 
; files required by in.named are located here
directory /var/named
; here are the names of the primary files
cache      .                              named.ca
primary    doc.com                        db.doc
primary    0.0.127.in-addr.arpa           db.127.0.0
primary    6.45.123.in-addr.arpa          db.123.45.6
;This system is also the secondary for the sales.doc.com domain
secondary  sales.doc.com                  111.22.3.4 db.sales
secondary  3.22.111.in-addr.arpa          111.22.3.4 db.192.168.8

In the context of the various example files presented in this chapter, the sample boot file above corresponds to the boot file of the dnsmaster, server which is an alias for the altair machine whose IP address is 123.45.6.1.

A boot file contains three elements:

• A directory line (see "The directory Line").

• A cache line (see "The cache Line").

• One or more name server lines (see "Specifying Server Function").

The directory Line

The directory line in the boot file designates the directory in which you want the name server to run:

directory /var/named

This allows the use of relative path names for the files mentioned in the boot file or, later, with the $INCLUDE directive. This feature is especially useful if you have many files to be maintained, and you want to locate them all in one directory dedicated to that purpose.

If there is no directory line in the boot file, all file names listed in the boot file must be full path names.

The cache Line

A name server needs to know which servers are the authoritative name servers for the root zone. To do this, you have to list the addresses of these higher authorities.

All servers should have the following line in the boot file to find the root name servers:

cache    .     named.ca

The first field after cache (.) indicates that the server will obtain root servers hints from the indicated file, in this case, named.ca (located in the directory /var/named).

The Server Role Lines

The server role lines specify whether the server is a primary and secondary name server as described in "Specifying Server Function", below.