Edward Dekkers <edward@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hey there guys,
for years I've run fetchmail to grab mail from my isp in multidrop mode.
Now, my area is finally ADSL enabled. The ISP I'm going with gives out
free static IP addresses. I've also bought a domain name which is
currently parked.
I'm pretty sure I can get the sendmail part sorted, but DNS has me
confused. At the domain name site, I can put in two name server fields.
Originally I thought I could just run DNS here on my Linux box. But
apparently from what I understand of the reading I'm doing I'd need two
servers to do this.
Other readings I'm doing are telling me to use my ISP's DNS servers and
have them set up the records for me.
I've been doing *EXACTLY* this for quite a few years. Dan's advice will
get you started on DNS but you should probably take things slowly. Get
your DNS set up and check that you can "find yourself" from outside your
own network (e.g., go to someplace that provides public internet access
and make sure you can connect). Make sure your ISP allows you to run your
own servers. Many ISPs do not or require that you purchase a business
account in order to do so.
As another poster has pointed out, you are supposed to have more than one
DNS pointing to your network. The internet police will not swoop down on
you if you don't but your network disappears whenever your name server is
down. A quick reboot isn't usually a problem but you probably ought to
have some sort of backup available in case you have a hardware failure
that has your DNS down for a lengthy period of time. As an example, my
DNS box is also the primary server for my home network so I set all of the
drives up with Linux software RAID and then confirmed that the box still
functions if I remove a ribbon cable from any disk. In addition, I have
an old PIII/733 that I typically use for testing that I can swap in if I
have to.
Once you have your network "live" you can start messing with sendmail.
Make sure you disable relaying from outside your network. Getting a basic
configuration working isn't hard and it's really nice to be able to
control your own e-mail. The only problem I've run into is my ISP still
claims my IP address on a reverse look-up so there are a very few places
(spamhaus in particular) who won't accept e-mail from my domain.
Hi
I'm in the middle of a similar exercise - I found the DNS how-to extremely
helpful. You might want to give it a shot. I bought the o'reilly books too,
but the how-to really does cover stuff very quickly. I had always thought
dns was a minefield, but once you look at it logically for your network it
all makes sense fairly quickly. I guess I'm a month into it now from my
first stab at it. It's well worth the effort I do have to say.
Best of luck
Bry
