Thanks. Actually I did try just running "named" and assumed that because the daemon died immediately I'd done something wrong, in fact /var/log/messages told me its configs were missing. So, if I could trouble you a little further (;-), could you spot whats wrong now : I enter
>nslookup
www.host-in-db-file.conf ww.xx.yy.zz
and nslookup fails after a delay with "connection timed out, no servers could be reached".
>ps -Af | grep named shows
admin 24319 1 0 22:42 ? 00:00:00 /usr/local/sbin/named -c /usr/local/bind-9.2.1/conf/named.conf
That named.conf is
options {
directory "/var/named";
};
zone "." in {
type hint;
file "db.cache";
};
zone "1.168.192.in-addr.arpa" in {
type master;
file "db.192.168.1";
};
zone "0.0.127.in-addr.arpa" in {
type master;
file "db.127.0.0";
};
zone "host-in-db-file.com" {
type master;
file "db.host-in-db-file.com";
};
And finally db.host-in-db-file.com is:
$TTL 86400
@ IN SOA
www.host-in-db-file.com. hostmaster.host-in-db-file.com. (
1 ; serial
10800 ; refresh
3600 ; retry
604800 ; expire
86400 ) ; default_ttl
IN NS my-nameservers-hostname.com.
IN A
www.xxx.yyy.zzz
www IN A
www.xxx.yyy.zzz
Some of the entries in named.conf have come from an intranet server running RH. Also, I'm not sure if my hosting company will allow this so it may be the setup is correct but they have blocked ns lookups on the ports. Thanks very much!!!