Suppose we are running a private network or intranet with the following setup:
IP addresses: 192.168.1.1 to 192.168.1.254
Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
Intranet domain name: pcqlabs.net
Network Administrators Email address:
192.168.1.5: Intranet web server
192.168.1.1: Intranet proxy server
Using DNS, we will assign the names www and proxy to the intranet Web and proxy servers respectively. The IP address of the PCQLinux machine on which we set up the DNS server is 192.168.1.2 (say). Before proceeding further, substitute the appropriate settings in your case.
Is DNS installed?
DNS package gets installed during PCQLinux installation if you had selected the Departmental Server install type or the “Servers>DNS Name Server” option during package selection. Check for the presence of a file named named in /etc/rc.d/init.d. In case the file is not present, install the RPM named bind-9.2.1-9.i386.rpm from PCQLinux 8.0 CD1.
Setup with Webmin
Launch Webmin and log into it. Click on Servers>Bind DNS Server. Select the option “Setup name server for internal non-internet use only” and click on the “Create Primary Configuration file” button. In the subsequent screen click on Create a new master zone. Fill in the following details.
Domain name/network: pcqlabs.net
email address : admin@pcqlabs.net
and click on Create. An icon labeled pcqlabs.net will show up on the “Bind DNS Server” screen. To assign names to the web and proxy server, click on pcqlabs.net icon and then click on the icon labeled Address. Fill in the following details:
Name: www
Address: 192.168.1.5
And click on Create. Similarly fill in the name (proxy) and IP address (192.168.1.1) for the proxy server. When done, click on the link “Return to zone list” and click on the button “start server” or “apply changes”, if the DNS server is already running.
After this, users on the network should be able to browse the intranet using the address http://www.pcqlabs.net, once the clients have been set up. Also in their proxy configuration, they can key in proxy.pcqlabs.net for the proxy server in place of
192.168.1.1
Looking up Internet sites
Till now, we have set up DNS to look up the IP addresses of machines on our private network. That means, our DNS server cannot resolve Internet website names like www.hotmail.com and www.pcquest.com. To enable this, click on “Forwarding and Transfers”
icon under the section “Global Server Options” on the main window.
For “Servers to forward queries to” fill in the IP address of the DNS server of your ISP, say 202.54.96.1, which is the IP address of VSNL’s DNS server.
Setting up Windows clients
To set up Windows machines on the network to use this DNS server, open the TCP/IP properties of the network card through Network Neighbourhood, My Network places or Control Panel. Fill in the IP address of the DNS server (192.168.1.2).
Setting up PCQLinux clients
Launch Webmin and click on Networking>
Network Configuration>DNS Client. For DNS servers, type in the IP address 192.168.1.2 and click
on Save.
Instead of setting up the clients manually, you can distribute the IP address of the DNS server
using DHCP
Shekhar Govindarajan