[Pdns-users] some basic question for master

[Stefan Schmidt]

On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 1:59 PM, Bill Yuan <bycn82 at gmail.com> wrote:

> hi
>

Hi,


> i have some question, i tried to google the answer, but for a newbie as me
> ,i think how to key-in the right keyword also a big problem,
>

Not confusing terminology is always a good start to ask the right questions.
In the subject of this email you have a "question for master" which will
lead experienced DNS operators in the direction that you might have a
question about the workings of an authoritative DNS server operating as a
master for some zone whereas it seems to me reading on that your interest
actually is with PowerDNS recursor. So a totally different beast. Let me
point you to the excellent wikipedia article about DNS for working out the
correct terms for most things DNS.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_Name_System


> 1, the zone-file,   how come the recursor know whether to query and
> resolve the domain ?  i think it is configured in the forward-zone-file,
> and currently i configured "*.=8.8.8.8" in the zone-file, so does it mean
> that for all domains , the recursor will use 8.8.8.8
>

It actually is forward-zones-file where zone is in the plural. It is a file
where you specify which zones will get forwarded to which authoritative
Nameserver IPs.
As is documented at
http://doc.powerdns.com/built-in-recursor.html#recursor-settings .
Calling the mentioned file a zonefile however is misleading at best as this
name is commonly used to refer to a file holding the actual data that
authoritative Nameservers such as BIND serve. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_file .
You will find that it is also documented that the forward-zones-file option
will not set the recursion desired bit when forwarding the queries, so if
your destination nameserver is a recursive one the forward-zones-recurse
option is what you will want to use instead.

For forwarding all queries to a recursive Nameserver the single dot without
any asterisks will denote the DNS root and hence by specifying .=8.8.8.8
all your queries will be forwarded to 8.8.8.8 unless they can be answered
by the configured backends.
However please read http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/separation.html on why doing
this is usually a bad idea.


>
> 2, how can i resolve the server name?  when i run command nslookup on my
> windows xp, i saw the info below
>
> Server:    1.1.168.192.in-addr.arpa
> Address:  192.168.1.1
>
> Non-authoritative-answer:
> Name:www.google.com
> .......
>
> My question is how can i change the server name, the name here
> 1.1.168.192.in-addr.arpa looks wired.
>

I am not a windows professional but my guess is that Windows tries to
resolve the configured Nameservers name and that your home router which is
likely 192.168.1.1 resolves itself like that. The DNS Address 192.168.1.1
will most likely be automatically assigned via DHCP, you should be able to
override that.
For actually testing DNS responses however dig is a tool much better suited
for that than nslookup. You should be able to get it from ISCs BIND for
Windows suite i think.

 Stefan
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