Novell LINUX ENTERPRISE SERVER 10 - INSTALLATION AND ADMINISTRATION 11-05-2007 Installation Manual page 645

TIP: Using the Dot in Zone Files
The . has an important meaning in the zone files. If hostnames are given
without a final ., the zone is appended. Complete hostnames specified with a
full domain name must end with a . to avoid having the domain added to it
again. A missing or wrongly placed dot is probably the most frequent cause of
name server configuration errors.
The first case to consider is the zone file world.zone, responsible for the domain
world.cosmos, shown in
Example 33.6 File /var/lib/named/world.zone
$TTL 2D
world.cosmos. IN SOA
2003072441
1D
2H
1W
2D )
IN NS
IN MX
gateway IN A
IN A
sun IN A
moon IN A
earth IN A
mars IN A
www IN CNAME
Line 1:
$TTL defines the default time to live that should apply to all the entries in this file.
In this example, entries are valid for a period of two days (2 D).
Line 2:
This is where the SOA (start of authority) control record begins:
• The name of the domain to administer is world.cosmos in the first position.
This ends with a ., because otherwise the zone would be appended a second time.
Alternatively, @ can be entered here, in which case the zone would be extracted
from the corresponding entry in /etc/named.conf.
Example 33.6, "File /var/lib/named/world.zone"
gateway root.world.cosmos. (
; serial
; refresh
; retry
; expiry
; minimum
gateway
10 sun
192.168.0.1
192.168.1.1
192.168.0.2
192.168.0.3
192.168.1.2
192.168.1.3
moon
(page 627).
The Domain Name System 627