Names of DNS Data Files

If you are internally consistent, the zone data files can be named anything. This flexibility might lead to some confusion when working at different sites or referring to different DNS manuals and books.

For example, the file names that are used in Sun manuals differ from those used in the book DNS and BIND published by O'Reilly & Associates and both of those nomenclatures have some differences from that used in the public-domain Name Server Operations Guide for BIND.

In addition, this documentation uses generic names that identify a file's main purpose, and specific example names in code samples. For example, this documentation uses the generic name hosts when describing the function and role of a file. Example names db.doc and db.sales are used in code samples.

The required data files are the following.

• /var/named/named.ca – See The named.ca File for additional information on the named.ca file. As long as you are internally consistent, you can name this file anything.

• /var/named/hosts – See The hosts File for additional information on hosts files.

  The name hosts is a generic name indicating the file's purpose and content. But to avoid confusion with /etc/hosts, you should name this file something other than hosts. The most common naming convention is db.domainname. Thus, the hosts file for the doc.com domain would be called db.doc.

  If you have more than one zone, each zone must have its own hosts file. Each hosts file must have a unique name. For example, if your DNS domain is divided into doc.com and sales.doc.com zones, you could name one hosts file db.doc and the other db.sales.

• /var/named/hosts.rev – See The hosts.rev File for additional information on the hosts.rev file.

  The name hosts.rev is a generic name indicating the file's purpose and content. If you have more than one zone, each zone must have its own hosts.rev file. Each zone hosts.rev file must have a unique name. For example, if your DNS domain is divided into doc.com and sales.doc.com zones, you could name one hosts.rev file doc.rev and the other sales.rev.

• /var/named/named.local – See The named.local File and for additional information on the named.local file. As long as you are internally consistent, you can name this file anything.

$INCLUDE Files

An include file is any file which is named in an $INCLUDE() statement in a DNS data file. $INCLUDE files can be used to separate different types of data into multiple files for your convenience. See $INCLUDE Files.

For reference purposes, the following table compares BIND file names from the above mentioned sources.