Books?!

[MrShadow]

G'Day,
Can anyone recommend some decent books on setting up and configuring sendmail and BIND?

CHeers

[kal]

The o'Reilly ones are the most obvious and are comprehensive (perhaps too much so).
I find that when people are asking me these types of questions they actually want to learn DNS and MTA concepts. If that is true in your case then a more general book might be better. BIND, due to its heritage is THE DNS. But knowing how to configure a view or wildcard zone isnt going to help you if you dont know what they are. In my opinion once you understand DNS, BIND is easy without a specific book (unless you have requirements out of the ordinary).
The sendmail site used to be the best source of information IMHO. But the more recent documentation on the site is far less userfriendly (despite being a little flashier).

The "In a nutshell" or "In 24 hours" type books can be handy as well for providing reference information and often make the bargain bins in many book stores when a newer version or the software comes out. Within reason a book on an older version will still be adequate to get started and from there you'll probably use forums and the Sendmail and ISC sites for more upto date info.

HTH
Kal

[MrShadow]

G'Day,
Yep, I agree with you on the DNS side of things. Basically, I have my own domain name and I'd like to host my own DNS server so I can add xxx.domain.com without a) having to pay for it and b) change it anytime I want without having to email my host (I already have my own web server).

As for sendmail, I have had a look over the site and, yeah. It's not the best. Might try and see if they have a "sample" setup that I can snaffel and modify. Basically, same as above. Want to setup up my own mail server so I can give my friends their own emails to use, and have as many as I like )ie once one starts getting too much spam, can it and start another).

[Incabulos]

The dark art of sendmail configuration has sent many a sysadmin into mental breakdown I'm certain - the notorious sendmail.cf is a perfect example of the most bizarre and obfuscated config file format known to man.

Its generally recommended that it not ever be edited by hand if you can believe that - the way to produce changes is to edit the far more user-friendly sendmail.mc, a meta-config file if you will, and then use the 'm4' tool to generate the sendmail.cf file from this.

Your distribution ( I'm assuming Linux, but the same holds true for the *bsds and pretty much every *nix out there ) will have its own way of configuring sendmail, possible by running 'make' in /etc/mail.

If you arent necessarily sold on sendmail as an MTA but just want one that does the job, I'd suggest you look at postfix, which will spare you the agony of going through most of the above contortions.

Having said all that, the o'Reilly books are indeed excellent, but judicious use of Google should find primers and step by step howtos on setting bind and sendmail up - try the Mail and DNS howtos at the Linux Documentation Project ( http://www.tldp.org )

[mbottrell]

Gotta agree with the poster above...

Look at the Linux Documentation Project First... lots in there... and reasonably put together (particular the DNS setup).

On sendmail... use and look at the sendmail.mc config file also you can use some of the other config files in that directory.

access : who is allowed to relay from this host.
local-host-names : all the names your machine is known as.. including CNAMES. :)
virtualuesrtable : userful for user1@domain1.com, user2@domain2.com, etc...

Run a 'make' in that directory and it will recreate them all.

Also look at /etc/aliases... then run 'newaliases' to rebuild it. :)

Cheers,

Matt.

[kal]

Originally posted by Incabulos

If you arent necessarily sold on sendmail as an MTA but just want one that does the job, I'd suggest you look at postfix, which will spare you the agony of going through most of the above contortions.

I'm a sendmail refugee myself, arrived on the shores of postfix and havent looked back. Postfix site documentation is better, although not complete. It had some nicer features for spam blocking/filtering which got me hooked. Still a sendmail fan but I'll stick with PF for now.

As for DNS, it definately sounds like a more general DNS book would suit. Most admin tools abstract BIND config anyway so you need to know what you want to do before you can find out how to do it. Be careful with some online tutorials as they often perpetuate urban myths (DNS seems to suffer this more than any other network protocol I've found). I used to teach net admins DNS/networking at an ISP and was often shocked at how much "false" information they'd picked up. Depends on how much you want to know as to how thick/expensive the book will be...
Be realistic, if its going to hold doors open then dont waste too much money:D

[mbottrell]

Still find that the best resource for information on DNS comes from Internet Systems Consortium (http://www.isc.org/index.pl?/bind). :)

I use O'Reilly's book on BIND... excellent read.
Also the RFC's point you in the right direction...

Must admit... there are many dodgy DNS configs out there. :(

Cheers,

Matt.

[MrShadow]

I've actually found a really helpfull DNS HOW-TO. I'm going to wait till I upgrade my HDD from 2.5 to 10GB before playing around with this. This app isn't "Mission Critical" ATM, as long as it doesn't screw up my net access (this is a jack of all trades box, including gateway for my network).

Hey Matt, could I run my DNS config by you before making it live? I just don't want to F*@k it up (as you said, lots of dodgy setups).

Cheers

[sticky_chicken]

I've actually found a really helpfull DNS HOW-TO. I'm going to wait till I upgrade my HDD from 2.5 to 10GB before playing around with this. This app isn't "Mission Critical" ATM, as long as it doesn't screw up my net access (this is a jack of all trades box, including gateway for my network).

Hey Matt, could I run my DNS config by you before making it live? I just don't want to F*@k it up (as you said, lots of dodgy setups).

Cheers

I've been hostmaster at several ISPs in the past and I'm more than happy to check out your named.conf as well as any zone files you might have for errors
:)

A good guide for DNS how-to is at:

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/other-formats/html_single/DNS-HOWTO.html

[mbottrell]

Originally posted by MrShadow
Hey Matt, could I run my DNS config by you before making it live? I just don't want to F*@k it up (as you said, lots of dodgy setups).

Cheers

Happy to look over it. :D

[kal]

After railing about the ignorance of ISP staff regarding DNS (no offence swifty ;) ) last night. I've just finished a marathon 4 week mail migration dealing with idiots from WebCentral (aka Telstra hosting), Telstra Bigpond and Optus. Perhaps its the management thats at fault, but when you get diverted to the "Supervisor for domain provisioning" (after 3 failed attempts at making the changes I requested), and he doesnt know what an MX,RR or PTR record is, then confuses a cname for a sub domain, you know you're in for a long project.

And to think I actually suggested we (company I work for) dont host our domains internally due to the hassle.

Its definately not rocket science. Infact when I used to teach, it was only the first few hours of a full week course. Dont want to scare you off, cause its not that hard.

PS Apologies to anyone who works for the 3 named companies above, but if you'd had the experience I've just had you'd understand.

[mbottrell]

ouch! :eek:

Never really did understand how DNS could be sooo difficult.

I host my own, and have partnerships with fellow techs so I have it replicated across 6 different DNS servers worldwide! :D

Host yaself, much easier.... and just setup a peer to replicate it with... offer them the same deal... and you're away.

Cheers,

Matt.

[kal]

Unfortunately some of the stuff we do requires high amounts of DNS traffic that *may* cause problems with our network.
However the excuses are getting weaker as my frustration grows.
here is a list of the stuff ups:

Webcentral assigned one of their own mail servers to our domain (mx 10... without being asked to mind you), despite there already being 2 mx records with our own servers already set up as mx 10 and 50. Oh and this "back up" mail server did not have a queue for our domain so it bounced all incoming mail for about a day or so till it was removed.... thanks guys.

Bigpond set up 2 servers as primary NS for our domain, each with their own version of our zone file... WTF?!?!?!

Optus have taken 2 weeks to add a single MX record because the new domain provisioning team doesnt know anything about domains. ... nuff said

I'm sometimes amazed the internet even works. There must be a stupidity rerouting protocol working in the background :)