Host your website home and dynamic update dns zone on zoneedit.com
This week I tried to find a solution for hosting my website (www.syshalt.net) home on a small server. I had all resources but no fixed IP in order to host DNS Server in my location. I have an ultra-fast connection but I`m connecting using PPPoE and after each disconnect and reconnect my IP changes.
After some time researching on internet I found that there are free solutions to this approach, and you can host your website on your home server.
First this you need to do is to go on www.zoneedit.com and register an account. Zone Edit hosts for FREE a Dynamic DNS Zone. What that means? Well they host for you DNS zone and you can update dynamic the DNS when your ip changes. After you register on zoneedit, create a zone name with your domain name and set the TTL to 300. Now you will need to go to your domain registrant account and change the DNS servers to the ones provided to you from zoneedit.com (when you log on member area, on the left side under "Host Status")
The final step is to install a client that updates on zoneedit.com your WAN ip every time it changes.
Installation on Windows:
After searching a windows client that can be installed as a windows server, and what I found did not worked as expected, I decided to create my own client that has no GUI, it runs only as a windows service and updates the zone automatically on zoneedit.com
zeDynDNS Version 1.2 - Download
Changes
- Fixed some issues on event messages handling.
The setup will install the client in C:\Program files\zeDynDNS and register automatically as windows service. After install go to installed folder and open zeDynDNS.ini in order to configure username, password (for zoneedit), domain zone (to be updated), update interval (default 5 minutes). Reboot your server or restart the service (Start -> run -> services.msc and find Zone Edit DynDNS) in order to apply the new settings.
Installation on Linux/UNIX (info from zoneedit.com)
Recommanded client by me: http://encodable.com/eponym/ (I used this on a linux server and works very good)
You can also use these commands:
lynx -source -auth=username:password 'http://dynamic.zoneedit.com/auth/dynamic.html?host=www.mydomain.com'
or
wget -O - --http-user=username --http-passwd=password 'http://dynamic.zoneedit.com/auth/dynamic.html?host=www.mydomain.com'
PPP users should place one of the above commands (or a perl client) in the file /etc/ppp/ip-up or /etc/ppp/ppp.linkup, which are called whenever a ppp connection is made.
Users of dhcpcd may place these commands in the file /etc/dhcpc/dhcpcd-eth0.exe or /etc/dhcpc/dhcpcd-eth1.exe which are executed whenever a new dynamic IP address is acquired.
More info you can find here: http://www.zoneedit.com/doc/dynamic.html
DNS – servfail response (SOA records)
Today, I have had some issues with one of my DNS servers.
The configuration is: one master and one slave for the zone. Yesterday night the master failed due to hard-disk failure. Today when I was reinstalled / upgraded the master, the slave start to respond “servfail” to all the queries for that zone. The thing was very strange because the slave still was the nameserver for that zone. Fortunately I managed to fix. The problem was in the SOA record.
As you know from an earlier post the zone looks something like this:
$TTL 3600
@ IN SOA example.com. root.example.com. (
0605200803 ; serial (d. adams)
36000 ; refresh
36000 ; retry
36000 ; expiry
36000 ) ; minimum
IN NS example.com.
example.com. IN A 192.168.2.141
example.org. IN A 192.168.2.142
www CNAME example.com.
The expiry timer is set to 36000 that in seconds means 10 hours. So the zone on slave will expire in 10 hours if the master cannot be contacted in the meantime. Keep in mind that the timers are in seconds and the slave WILL NOT ANSWER ANY QUERY WHEN THE ZONE HAS EXPIRED (the answer will be SERVFAIL).
Installing a DNS Server on CentOS 5
About DNS
When hosts on a network connect to one another via a hostname, also called a fully qualified domain name (FQDN), DNS is used to associate the names of machines to the IP address for the host.
Use of DNS and FQDNs also has advantages for system administrators, allowing the flexibility to change the IP address for a host without effecting name-based queries to the machine. Conversely, administrators can shuffle which machines handle a name-based query.
DNS is normally implemented using centralized servers that are authoritative for some domains and refer to other DNS servers for other domains.
When a client host requests information from a nameserver, it usually connects to port 53. The nameserver then attempts to resolve the FQDN based on its resolver library, which may contain authoritative information about the host requested or cached data from an earlier query. If the nameserver does not already have the answer in its resolver library, it queries other nameservers, called root nameservers, to determine which nameservers are authoritative for the FQDN in question. Then, with that information, it queries the authoritative nameservers to determine the IP address of the requested host. If performing a reverse lookup, the same procedure is used, except the query is made with an unknown IP address rather than a name.
Example:
bob.example.com
mail.example.com
games.example3.com
In this case we will use the well known BIND 9. BIND is also known as the service named in CentOS.