how to: ns1 & ns2

Howdy,

Yeah, setting up DNS servers can be tricky, and there's a number of "correct" ways to do it, which is probably why you're seeing such variety in the documents you're reading.

First off, I might suggest O'Reilly's DNS and BIND book, which is pretty good at getting folks up to speed with all the DNS intricacies.

For what you're asking for above, since I assume you're setting this all up on a box running Webmin, you might find it easier to go through a tutorial that uses Webmin to setup BIND, rather than doing it manually (that said, it's always good to understand how to do it manually, which the above book can help with ;-)

This HOWTO looks pretty good:

http://rimuhosting.com/support/bindviawebmin.jsp

As that HOWTO mentions, you'd ideally have two separate servers each with their own IP -- but a lot of folks run one server with two IP's, and point both NS1 and NS2 at the same server.

The HOWTO will walk you through setting up the DNS records on your server (using Webmin), as well as registering the nameservers with your domain name registrar.

Good luck!
-Eric