Implementing a caching-only DNS on Debian

After 3 years of sticking with Novell, I recently switched away from openSUSE to Debian. There are a few reasons why, but I won’t bore you with them. So far I’m liking it. There are a few things to set up before I settle in, and one is slow DNS lookup.

I described how and why to make a caching-only DNS on openSUSE in July 2010.  In Debian it’s a little different:

1. Install bind of course. The package is called bind9 and installs itself as a service and starts automatically, no need to mess with runlevels:
   
   # aptitude install bind9

2. The config for bind in Debian is a subdirectory structure in /etc/bind.  For a simple caching-only server, you leave /etc/bind/named.conf untouched and instead change /etc/bind/named.conf.options to have your forwarders:
   
   // MJL20120111 - Adding Google2, OpenDNS1, gateway
   forwarders {
   8.8.4.4; 208.67.222.222; 192.168.1.1;
   };

3. Restart bind to load the new configuration:
   
   # service bind9 restart

4. You will need to change your network to use the local bind. I used NetworkManager on the GNOME desktop, but you can just edit /etc/resolv.conf:
   
   nameserver 127.0.0.1 #local bind

   If you edit the file by hand, you’ll have to restart the network somehow (haven’t found out how yet, except with NetworkManager).

5. Done. Test it:
   
   $ nslookup australia.gov.au
   Server:127.0.0.1
   Address:127.0.0.1#53Non-authoritative answer:
   Name:australia.gov.au
   Address: 205.239.168.12

All good, and much faster. Happy surfing.

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