Secondary DNS

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#1 Wed, 12/06/2006 - 08:05
WilliamWilson

Secondary DNS

Does anyone know a good relatively simple way to setup a secondary DNS for the domains hosted on a virtualmin pro box?

I have been using everydns.net for my dns, which their servers are fast, but over the last few days they have been under a denial of service attack. I want a way to make sure my domain names are still resolving in the future.

What I was thinking I could do was setup a name server record at my registrar like NS1.myvirtualmindomain.com and add it to the external dns records for my domains to resolve from the outside. Then if everydns.net did go down, that one name server would atleast be able to resolve names for my domains.

What I don't understand is what I need to do on the virtualmin box to create a secondary dns server that would answer for all of my domains.

Thu, 12/07/2006 - 22:33
Joe
Joe's picture

Hey William,

There is a doc about setting up a secondary slave DNS server, here:

http://www.virtualmin.com/support/documentation/virtualmin-dns-slaves/

It does require Webmin on the slave, but you don't have to buy Virtualmin just for that purpose. And it doesn't need to be a big box. DNS isn't very hard work.

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Fri, 12/08/2006 - 10:48
WilliamWilson

Thanks, I knew there was one around here somewhere.

I read through it, but can you clarify a couple of things for me..

So I could create a NS record at my registrar for the virtualmin pro box and I could create a second one for the webmin box right? Or I could just create two and point each one to separate IP's on the virtualminpro box probably too, but I like the idea of having another box for that second one.

I guess mostly I am confused about if I point an NS record at my virtualmin box right now and add it as another ns record to all the domains hosted on the box, will it answer ns requests right now without adding any records to the box?

Is it better to then make the virtualmin box the master and make the everydns.net servers slaves also?

Fri, 12/08/2006 - 11:02 (Reply to #3)
Joe
Joe's picture

Hey William,

Yes, you'd also need to add the extra NS record to your local DNS zone (the Virtualmin configuration creates a single NS record, by default, unless you've setup any secondary servers, in which case it also adds records for those).

<i>I guess mostly I am confused about if I point an NS record at my virtualmin box right now and add it as another ns record to all the domains hosted on the box, will it answer ns requests right now without adding any records to the box?</i>

I'm not actually sure I get what you're asking...but I think no? The bit that makes me say no is &quot;without adding any records&quot;...you have to have records for everything you're querying the nameserver for. Though Virtualmin can add them automatically, and it'll add them for and on the slave automatically if you setup Webmin.

<i>Is it better to then make the virtualmin box the master and make the everydns.net servers slaves also?</i>

I would recommend making the Virtualmin box the master--simply because it's so easy to get the records right if you let Virtualmin set them up. I don't know how much you can automate at easydns.net, but if it'll let you configure it as a slave of your Virtualmin server, you can avoid almost all of the work. Slaves, ordinarily, do have to be setup for each zone--so you still have to manually create the slave zone for each new zone on your Virtualmin box. But the actual records should automatically transfer, assuming your Virtualmin box BIND is allowing transfers.

If easydns.net has some sort of API, we might be able to come up with a post create script to setup the slave zone automatically. I dunno anything about what sort of access they offer.

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Sat, 02/24/2007 - 07:59
MarkThomas

I've set up a secondary DNS server and configured it as a slave using the document you mentioned above. I have pointed at the slave through my registrar. I have modified my firewall to enable nameserver and webmin traffic to it.

I can sign into the slave using the IP address, but the server name does not seem to work. I can dig the name alright (srv2.mtplaces.net).

I'm not sure where to go from here. My registrar would normally recognize my zone as mtplaces.net. Does it keep separate records there for srv1 and srv2, or do I have to set up records like that at my end? (srv1 resolves fine for me but srv2 does not.)

I was looking at some of the options in Webmin/Servers/BIND, and ran across 'Other DNS Servers.' What is the difference between using the slave options you have told us about and using this 'Other DNS Servers' option?

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