Reverse DNS
 

Hi,

I set up DNS on my webserver which is connected to the net, and changed the DNS entries with the registrar.

All seems well.

I never set up any reverse DNS entries. How important is this? A dig -x returns the machine name the hosting company gave me when they set the machine up as opposed to the name my machine has now on the net.

Also if I host more than one website from this box how does reverse DNS work? Will the dig -x return all the machine names ( as and when I set up the reverse entries? ).

thanks for any advice

dave

Doesn't matter too much with webservers. If you ever want to run a amailserver though it's pretty important as some hosts will reject mail from IP's with no rDNS.

Thanks for that, but I do need to set up the reverse DNS to interact with a script on another host.

It looks pretty straight forward, but I have just one question.

Once I set it up and then restart named, do I need to do more? Will the reverse dns find it's way into the net via the name servers, or do I need to contact whoever is responsible for the bit of the net above me in the tree?

My server is located in Canada somewhere and reverse dns at the moment on my host IP address shows xxx.xxx.xxx.in-addr.arpa as a machine name belonging to them and being resolved by their nameservers.

i.e. do they need to deligate those queries to my nameservers?

hope I explained that right

thanks

EDIT:

Oh OK after a lot of browsing on the net I found the answer to that one.
My ISP has to either
A) Set up the reverse DNS on their servers or
B) Deligate the lookup to my server.

Shame my ISP "technical support" couldn't tell me that in the first place.