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3. Step by step

This section explains what the different options used in /etc/named.conf are.

3.1 check-names ignore

The "check-names ignore" option is required to permit underscores in the DNS names.

3.2 allow-update

The "allow-update" will only allow updates from the ip's or ACL specified.

3.3 What are those _*.domain.com files I created?

We specified four files in named.conf; _udp.domain.com, _tcp.domain.com, _sites.domain.com and _msdcs.domain.com. These files are sub-domains of our root zone (domain.com) and are required (some people claim that you need more than the four files, but I have found this to be unsubstantiated. Again, this is factual for my case scenario and maybe not yours.). They delegate the locator zones to the Windows 2000-based server by Dynamic Update (Q232025). Dynamic Update is the term used for the ability under certain specified conditions to add, modify or delete records (or RRsets) in the master zone files (RFC 2136).

3.4 What about the .jnl files?

The dynamic zone files in /var/named/etc cannot be edited manually, and the ones you see aren't necessarily the last saved ones. The zone files are only written to disk occasionally, and when shutting down the server. Changes that have occurred since the zone file was last written to disk are stored only in the zone's journal (.jnl) file.

However, If you do need to make changes to the dynamic zone manually, it is possible.You'll have to shut down the dns server, rename the .jnl extension, edit the zone file, and then restart the server. I have not tested this personally since there's really no need to do this, but hey, who knows - maybe somebody out there wants to do it.


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