I have several domains – kimballlarsen.com, hugegrocerysavings.com, twigglesgiggles.com, ourpioneerhistory.com – for which I host DNS.  Until recently, this has all been done via my ISP’s hosting services, etc.  A few months ago, I decided to finally learn Bind9 and figure out how to set up DNS for my domains at work (30+ of them) and in so doing learned how to easily do the same for my piddly stack of personal domains.

Tonight I’m just setting up my new Gutsy box named "The Bridge" to host DNS for my domains.  

First off, when I installed Gutsy, I did so using the PC (Intel x86) server install CD, which does not install fluffy things like X11 by default, and saves a bunch of overhead in the form of useless software on this server.  During the install, it asks what roles this server will fill – and I believe I selected everything except for Postgres Database Server (never been convinced that Postgres is all that much better for my needs than MySQL).  Thus, the Bind9 DNS package should already be installed.  To verify, there are several ways you can check to see what is installed.  I am too lazy to actually remember the command to look up what has been installed using apt, but I do remember that if you try to apt-get install something that is already installed, it tells you that you’re a moron for trying again:

So, bind is all installed, and we’re set.  Now, I already have these domains set up in Bind9 on the Holodeck, so in theory, I should just have to copy the /etc/bind/ directory from the holodeck to the bridge and restart bind on the bridge.  Go get a drink. This will take just a second.

Ick.  That didn’t work at all:

Alright, so I guess I really should have kept the file called rndc.key from the original install.  I’ll try that instead:

(good thing I made a backup of the original config, eh?)

Can it really be that easy?