11. How to become a bigger time DNS admin.

Documentation and tools.

Real Documentation exists. Online and in print. The reading of several of these is required to make the step from small time DNS admin to a big time one. In print I have written The Concise Guide to DNS and BIND (by Nicolai Langfeldt), published by Que (ISDN 0-7897-2273-9). The book is much like this HOWTO. Just more details, and a lot more of everything. But the standard book is DNS and BIND by C. Liu and P. Albitz from O'Reilly & Associates (ISBN 0-937175-82-X). It's excellent too. Get the 3rd edition, it covers BIND 8 as well as BIND 4. There is also a section on DNS in TCP/IP Network Administration, by Craig Hunt from O'Reilly (ISBN 0-937175-82-X). Another must for good DNS administration (or good anything for that matter) is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig :-) Available as ISBN 0688052304 and others.

Online you will find stuff on http://www.dns.net/dnsrd/ (DNS Resources Directory), http://www.isc.org/bind.html; A FAQ, a reference manual (BOG; BIND Operations Guide) as well as papers and protocol definitions and DNS hacks (these, and most, if not all, of the RFCs mentioned below, are also contained in the BIND distribution). I have not read most of these, but then I'm not a big-time DNS admin either. Arnt Gulbrandsen on the other hand has read BOG and he's ecstatic about it :-). The newsgroup news:comp.protocols.tcp-ip.domains is about DNS. In addition there are a number of RFCs about DNS, the most important are probably the ones listed here. Those that have BCP (Best Current Practice) numbers are highly recommended.

RFC 2671

P. Vixie, Extension Mechanisms for DNS (EDNS0) August 1999.

RFC 2317

, BCP 20, H. Eidnes et. al. Classless IN-ADDR.ARPA delegation, March 1998. This is about CIDR, or classless subnet reverse lookups.

RFC 2308

, M. Andrews, Negative Caching of DNS Queries, March 1998. About negative caching and the $TTL zone file directive.

RFC 2219

, BCP 17, M. Hamilton and R. Wright, Use of DNS Aliases for Network Services, October 1997. About CNAME usage.

RFC 2182

, BCP 16, R. Elz et. al., Selection and Operation of Secondary DNS Servers, July 1997.

RFC 2052

A. Gulbrandsen, P. Vixie, A DNS RR for specifying the location of services (DNS SRV), October 1996

RFC 1918

Y. Rekhter, R. Moskowitz, D. Karrenberg, G. de Groot, E. Lear, Address Allocation for Private Internets, 02/29/1996.

RFC 1912

D. Barr, Common DNS Operational and Configuration Errors, 02/28/1996.

RFC 1912 Errors

B. Barr Errors in RFC 1912, this is available at http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/~barr/rfc1912-errors.html

RFC 1713

A. Romao, Tools for DNS debugging, 11/03/1994.

RFC 1712

C. Farrell, M. Schulze, S. Pleitner, D. Baldoni, DNS Encoding of Geographical Location, 11/01/1994.

RFC 1183

R. Ullmann, P. Mockapetris, L. Mamakos, C. Everhart, New DNS RR Definitions, 10/08/1990.

RFC 1035

P. Mockapetris, Domain names - implementation and specification, 11/01/1987.

RFC 1034

P. Mockapetris, Domain names - concepts and facilities, 11/01/1987.

RFC 1033

M. Lottor, Domain administrators operations guide, 11/01/1987.

RFC 1032

M. Stahl, Domain administrators guide, 11/01/1987.

RFC 974

C. Partridge, Mail routing and the domain system, 01/01/1986.