I am at the situation where CPanel is really becoming a serious performance drainer. The benefit thou, is that CPanel came with everything pre-installed. So I really didn't need to know to much linux or apache to setup my server.

However I have decided to format and reinstall the system customly. I know how to install Apache,PHP,and MySQL, and for that matter getting up the webserver to run through http using IP. (http://12.34.56.78/)

It all works fine, however I still need to setup the DNS to work on the server. Nameservers are the question here. I really dont know too much about them, so I have a few questions...

1) is it possible to setup a webserver (like I just explained) which has only ONE domain without having to install a DNS resolver onto your system?

2) I really dont want to have anyone else in control of my DNS resolution, so therefore I would most likely need to install a program onto my machine which does the job. So how is this done?

Only if you let your domain registrar handle it.

Well, I have found that you should really just let your domain registrar handle this. They will have redundant servers in a fail-safe configuration.

If you really insist on doing this yourself (it is not a trivial task, even for those who are experienced) then bind is the program you are looking for. And to tell the truth I have only ever set it up as a caching nameserver for my LAN, never as a primary name server for my domain. It's really just too much of a bother, and is to prone to failure.

Setting up BIND isn't that bad. My philosophy is, set it up so that you understand how DNS works.

-twantrd

Maybe so, but can you assure your server is up and available 24/7/365?
What do you do during a network/hardware failure?
Is there a backup system for when you must upgrade?
Do you have astatic IP?

All questions that must be considered.

well all of pretty much my domains are controlled with godaddy. I have never seen the option that allows them to handle the DNS resolving.

Do I have to contact them and ask, or is there something that I am missing...?

Bulliver, good point.

Matsko, you could setup an internal DNS server or some kind of test environment so that you will know how DNS works and later have the proper skills in setting one up for your domain.

-twantrd

Well, I am not familiar with godaddy, but my domain registrar will provide their nameservers free of charge to point your domain to the IP of my choosing, which in my case is my home IP address (which I pay extra to have as static).

Exactly, and this is what I do, just set up bind to be a caching nameserver for your LAN. It will make your internet surfing that much faster, and teach you the basics of DNS/Bind. The primary domain server just seems too important to be futzing around with on your home computer for my tastes.