Video - Configuring DNS in Mac OS X Server 10.6

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Video - Configuring DNS in Mac OS X Server 10.6

This is a follow up to my previous post. I had some requests for a screencast, so I made one.

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5 months ago vjl (Twitter) responded:

Great video! I have a question, though. What if one is setting up a Mac OS X 10.6 Server behind a NAT router on a connection that has a static IP and a reverse DNS for that hostname?

Eg: I have a server, dargo.vjl.org, which is accessible via a public IP. But it sits behind a router and has a 192.168.0.x address. I'm in the process of setting up this Mac mini to replace a Linux box that is currently behind the router [there are actually several computers behind the router and the router does port forwarding so that certain services are provided by different computers - the Mac mini server will be providing nearly all those services, once I get it installed].

What I had setup was similar to your examples for non-public configurations. Eg: primary zone name of vjl.lan. and the machine name of dargo. But when running some of the tests to confirm things are setup properly, reverse DNS would state [correctly] that the hostname was dargo.vjl.org since that's how everyone outside the 192.168.0.x subnet sees the machine.

To complicate matters more, the Mac mini server is going to provide DNS services [because the ISP's DNS servers are not reliable] to the other 192.168.0.x systems plus a couple that exist outside the NAT router [the connection has 5 static IPs - dargo.vjl.org is one of the 5 hosts, as there is also stark, crichton, etc, but they are not living behind the NAT router]. The mac mini server will also be a secondary DNS server [ns2.vjl.org] serving name resolution for about 100 domains that are hosted on a co-located server about 50 miles from here [which also runs as ns1.vjl.org - not using BIND9 though, but using tinydns which means i need to figure out how to send updates/zone transfers to the mac mini's BIND DNS server].

Anyway, I guess my question is: should I set the primary zone name to vjl.org. and not vjl.lan.? If I do do that, will the other 192.168.0.x systems be able to use the mac mini as a DNS server [and also access the other services, like ical server, etc, that i wish to run on the mac mini].

Thanks for any info you can provide! :)

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Video - Configuring DNS in Mac OS X Server 10.6