I have a linux server that I set up to do a specific task. It's running and working. Now, I am unsure of how to bind the domain name to my IP address. I am using Fedora 8. Can anyone tell me how I would do this or point me in the right direction??

Do you mean for external lookups like www.google.com? You need a nameserver.

Have a look at www.zoneedit.com as - there are others that offer a free name service as well, but I know this one because I use it. Never had any problems. I'm sure the others are good too.

So what I mean is lets say that I have a registered domain name(www.blah.com). How do I map that domain name(www.blah.com) to my computer at home? I changed the /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf file so that it reads ServerName www.blah.com:80. I'm assuming I will need to do some other things as well. Just wondering if someone can point me in the right direction. Thanks!

Well, lets start off with something simple.
billymayday was right, you do need an external NS servers.
I also suggest ZoneEdit, It might be a bit aggressive towards new users but can be mastered in minutes actually.

Go to your registar (where you bought the domain) and after setting up your domain on ZoneEdit.com enter in the register domain info the nameservers that ZoneEdit has allocated for you.

After you have completed this step I recommend you go back to ZoneEdit and check what is your IP, and in there (ZoneEdit that is), look for the name servers, enter your IP as the NS servers and wait, it might take 24-48 hours to update at first, but once the NS appear to forward to ZoneEdit.com nameservers, each change you will make there will be instant.

Meaning: If you change your IP because you disconnected, and you go to ZoneEdit and change to your new IP there, the change will become LIVE instantly.

I hope it helped, feel free to ask any thing else if you need more help

Ok thanks for the feedback guys. So after I change the nameservers, how would I configure my linux box to point to the correct domain?

First action: check that you can ping your box by domain name. Actually, unless you do want something complicated with virtual hosts, that should be enough.. Your web server can completely lack any information about domain it is running on, and still serve pages (check that it does that when you put IP in the browser address bar). ServerName allows it to give saner error messages in some situations, but even that is optional. Usage of VirtualHosts etc is well described in Apache manual on httpd.apache.org , but you should only do that after your server works via both IP and domain name.

O I forgot to mention that I bought a domain name(www.blah.com) on yahoo and they provided me with DNS nameservers. So I am assuming that I don't need Zoneedit. I have a static IP address from my ISP and would like my domain name to link to my static IP. So when I click on www.blah.com I want it to point to my /var/www/html/index.html page on my home fedora 8 server. Just unsure how to do this?

No, you won't need another nameserver if yahoo are doing it for you.

What you need to do is to set up a web server such as apache. Here's a howto to get you started

http://www.linuxhomenetworking.com/w...che_Web_Server

F8 comes with apache, so it's either there, or you can install it easily with

yum install httpd

or use the package manager

Let us know how you go

Ok, so I got my server running for a little bit. I had to forward port 80 on my router to my server's private IP address. Since I bought the domain name on yahoo, I had to go into my account and do a mask forward of my domain to my IP address. I then changed my httpd.conf by adding..

ServerName www.blah.com:80

Also for the Virtual Host part...
NameVirtualHost 192.168.1.21
NameVirtualHost 23.33.32.89
<VirtualHost 192.168.1.21 76.23.23.1>
DocumentRoot /var/www/html
<VirtualHost>

Where 192.168.1.21 is my private ip address behind my router, and 76.23.23.1 is my public ip address. So it was working for me and then I forgot that I have a dynamic IP address. It seems like what I did earlier won't work now since I don't have a static IP address. I was looking at billymayday's link that he added on his post and it gave an example using dyndns. So if I were to use dyndns do I have to configure the VirtualHosting part on the httpd.conf file or do I just comment it out? Also, when I configure my yahoo account, since I have a dynamic IP address what would I configure on there to have them forward traffic from domain to my IP address at home. Lil confused so any help would be greatly appreciated .

You can safely comment out VirtualHost part.

As for dynamic IP, I would go to dyndns/freedns.afraid.org/no-ip.com and register some randomly generated (ecology reasons: nobody will see it, so leave better names to those who have better use for them; and your intermediate domain name will be unguessable, which is sometimes good) domain name and setup dynamic IP autoupdate. Then I would make Yahoo! control panel make your own domain have only CNAME record to the autoupdated domain.

Disclaimer: it may be so that Yahoo! has dynamic IP autoupdate feature and even sane documentation for it, so check that first.

Ok, I signed up for Dyndns.org and received a user/password and set up a domain name blah.homelinux.com. Now I've been reading that I have to edit my Linux /etc/ddclient.conf file. This is what I changed in my ddclient.conf file. Can anyone tell me if this is right?

daemon=600
cache=/tmp/ddclient.cache
pid=/var/run/ddclient.pid
use=web, web=checkip.dyndns.com/, web-skip='IP Address'
login=your-username
password=your-password
protocol=dyndns2
server=members.dyndns.org
wildcard=YES
niner710.hostlinux.com
custom=yes, www.blah.com

blah.hostlinux.com -> my domain that created on dyndns.
www.blah.com -> my website that i got thru yahoo.

I then did a service ddclient start. Changed the CNAME record on yahoo to niner710.hostlinux.com.

First of all, is what I'm doing right and is this all I would have to do or is there anything else as well? Thanks!

Ok, it looks like everything worked. I did a mask forward on my yahoo domain control center to my dyndns.org hostname(niner710.hostlinux.com) and then changed the CNAME record to niner710.hostlinux.com).

Seems like I configured the ddclient.conf file correctly, which I posted in my previous post.

Anyways, appreciate the help from everyone. Thanks!