1.1 Introduction

All first moves in a Scrabble game have a few things in common: you play across the star, the opening square. You try to score high without opening up a premium square, particularly a Triple Word Score, for your opponent.

Most DNS setups start in very similar ways, too: you register a new domain and maybe a reverse-mapping domain; choose a version of BIND; download the BIND source code, if you need to, and build it; configure a primary master and slave name server; and make sure both name servers start at boot time.

This chapter will guide you through those opening moves and help you get your DNS infrastructure established.