Well I have been all over - read all there is about DNS and bind - Read Howto forums etc - but still seem to be stumbling on something - but cant put my finger on it.

Here are my objectives but not sure if i am taking things further than i need and would really appreciate some help.

I have got a 123-reg domain - mywebspace.co.uk (here i am allowed to change everything on dns, nameservers, A records CNAME's etc.

I have a Ubuntu -server installation on my personal home machine (running at the moment as a virtual machine Until i get things right)

I have pointed my domain name to the external (static) Ip address of my router - 888.888.888.888 (for eg)
I have configure my router to forward ports on 8080, 80, 23, 21, 110, 10000 etc etc to the internal ip address (static) 192.168.1.10

My true intentions are : to have multiple webpages under my domain name : like - me.mywebspace.co.uk and mymate.mywebspace.co.uk and once i have email set up for EVERYTHING@mywebspace.co.uk to goto a web login at say webmail.mywebspace.co.uk . (obviosly will have all the mail stuff set up according to the howtoforge guid on 6.06 perfect setup)

Now I am not sure if i need it but I looked and attempted to use ISPconfig but this seems to confuse me more.

The front end to it all - I would love to use the Joomla system (as i know how to ue it for a single web system) but not sure what i need to do to manage more than one webpage.

What is getting to me the most is DNS and nameservers etc. I have tried so many different things - but not sure how involved i need to be with the configs.

Do i need to have my own nameserver? ns.mywebspace.co.uk and configure the control panel at 123-reg to point my name server to this ns.mywebspace.co.uk and the (external or internal) ip address of it?

when i edit the /etv/hosts file - server1.mywebspace.co.uk - do i use 192.168.1.10 or the external ip address of my router?

do i need to edit or creater /etc/resolv.conf ? what do i need to put in there?

If i need to create a nameserver - what should i do? (they mention 2 name server are needed) but i have one server - what do i point to as the second server?

If i want to create a subdomain - webmail.mywebspace.co.uk - how do i go about doing it?

Once this has been fully explained and installed and working - It will then be able to look into it to understand it better.

Any help will be muchly apreciated -
cheers

As regards DNS, if you use 123-reg's DNS servers and you can edit the zone files you don't need your own nameservers. As you suggested just point the A record for whatever.mywebspace.com at your external IP address and then forward the correct ports to your internal webserver.

You therefore don't need your own DNS server visible to the outside world.

For the other stuff I'd have a look at the Apache documentation on virtual hosts - you can do it yourself without using ISPconfig or equivalent.

As always get simple config working first and then do changes one at a time.

Good luck

Hi, how did you get on with your 123-reg & ubuntu settings?

I am using SME server & 123-reg, I had the same learning curve re-nameservers & DNS A records.

I have got the web sites working, although sometimes it does seem to time out. But have not as yet worked out the email server bit.

How did you get on?

Cheers.

Miles

I've used 123-reg and their DNS is perfectly OK. Just make sure that your @ record points to your external IP, and the hostname (starts as www) A record does the same. The only bit you can come unstuck with is that you have no control over your reverse lookups (PTR records) so you may find your emails being bounced unless you forward them to a smarthost (usually your ISP's outgoing mailserver).

Your HOSTS file needn't know anything about the outside world. It can get your hostnames via DNS just like any other machine.

Carl.