I run a server that supports a local lan as inet gateway. It's a P1 with 32mb RAM, bucha disk space, running debian 3.1. Despite performing many functions (f-wall, samba, dhcp, etc...) it has very low overall load, and has run for like a year with no problems whatsoever.

Recently Ive noticed (very sporadic) that client machines take along time to resolve dns names while surfing the net (not very often, though). It is annoying. I am thinking that it could be due to a slow dns server on the isp which i use. Maybe it's something else, but im not exp'd enough to know how to test or investigate this

My question in a general sense is:

1) When should an admin install bind for local resolution, as opposed to simply using a reliable one nearby..?

Related questions are:

2) Are there any complications involve with running your own dns? It seems, from searching the net, that this is quite common and no big deal.

3) How difficult is it to maintain a dns server?

4) Is it always necessary to chroot BIND..?

5) Are there any other gotchas (from you experienced guys..) related to this...?


Thanks!
Danimal

Some reasons (non exhaustive list...) for which you may want to run a DNS server locally:
- You want to speed up name resolution on your local network using a cache dns server
- You need to resolve names on your local network installed on a VPN (to acces different web, ftp, ssh.... servers).

This answer to those two questions will greatly depend on the type of use you will make of your dns server. For a cache only name server, in most cases, your just have to setup, run and forget about it. For a local name resolution, you will have to configure/maintain one or several local master/slave zones, with a maintenance overhead depending on how often your have to change settings on those zones.

No. Just decide to do it or not depending on your security requirements.

I run a local name server on my vpn for about 18 months for caching and local name resolution. Beside the work overhead to read doc and learn DNS a little bit, configure my server and my local zone, configure the different pcs on the network and the dhcp server in the beginning, I rarely touch the dns configuration except when adding new machines/domains or upgrade the server. I use bind9 on fedora core 4