ramirez said:
So, I have to edit named.conf myself, since DA doesn't support setting up slave nameservers?
See my previous post to this thread; there's no such thing as a slave nameserver.
All the sites on your DA box should have master zones set up by DA. The only reason you'd want to create slave zones would be if you were going to use it to slave zones with master records hosted elsewhere. Is that what you want to do? If so, then you'll need to create named.conf records and new zone files manually.
If you're using two IP#s on your DA system in an attempt to "fool" DNS into thinking you have two nameservers when in fact you only have one you do NOT create slave zones anywhere. You just have the two IP#s answering on the same server. To make sure they both answer you can ping both IP#s, or you can do an nslookup or a dig on a specific server from outside your datacenter network.
Otherwise, no you don't have to do any editing of either named.conf or the zone files.
What you have to do is tell DA what the IP# is of ns1.yourdomain.com and of ns2.yourdomain.com. The IP# for ns2.yourdomain.com does NOT have to be on your server, but can be for another server, anywhere, or for a commercial service such as the one we offer.
Then you create slave zones on the machine corresponding to the second IP#. You do it by making changes to named.conf on THAT system.
The only reason you'd have to edit your DA-based named.conf file would be if you've got any allow-transfer directives; if so you'll have to make sure they specifically allow the IP# of the ns2 system to get zone-file transfers.
You can even automate the creation of zones on the server running as ns2, but that's done completely outside of Bind.
However, what I meant is that, everytime I add a new subdomain (via DA), it doesn't instantly activate,
What do you mean by "it"? Do you mean your master DNS, controlled by DA, doesn't work, or that it doesn't create slave DNS automatically?
as it did with my other nameservers I used before my own,
Your prior DNS provider may have had some other method, perhaps transparent to you, to creating slave DNS records, or even multiple master records, on multiple servers.
I tried restarting Apache and Named.
Restarting the named daemon is always necessary after making manual changes; you don't have to do it after making changes through the control panel, as DA does it for you.
When editing master zone files you should always update the serial numbers before restarted the daemon. You should never edit slave zone files; they're managed by the named daemon.
You're welcome. DNS is a very important part of the Internet; it's the "glue" that holds it all together. If you don't understand it, then you really shouldn't mess with it. Either use it by default, as it was designed to be used, hire a consultant to set up exactly what you want and possibly create a templating system so you can add more records later, or learn it yourself. I highly recommend "Linux DNS Server Administration", published by Sybex, or "DNS and Bind" published by O'Reilly, for good background experience in DNS.
Jeff