System Administration Guide: Naming and Directory Services (DNS, NIS, and LDAP)

Setting Up the Data Files

All the data files used by the DNS daemon in.named are written in standard resource record format. Each line of a file is a record, called a resource record (RR). Each DNS data file must contain certain resource records.

Resource Record Types

The most commonly used types of resource records are listed in Table 5–7. They are usually entered in the order shown in Table 5–7, but that is not a requirement.

Table 5–3 Commonly Used Resource Record Types

Type 

Description 

SOA 

Start of authority 

NS 

Name server 

IPv4 Internet address (name to address) 

AAAA 

IPv6 Internet address (name to address) 

PTR 

Pointer (address to name) 

CNAME 

Canonical name (nickname) 

TXT 

Text information 

MX 

Mail exchanger 

In the sample files included in the following sections, @ indicates the current zone or origin and lines that begin with a semicolon (;) are comments.