12.6. Common Mistakes to Avoid

It is very common for beginners to make mistakes when editing BIND configuration files. Be sure to avoid the following issues:

• Take care to increment the serial number when editing a zone file.

  data of that zone.

• Be careful to use ellipses and semi-colons correctly in the /etc/named.conf file.

  An omitted semi-colon or unclosed ellipse section will cause named to refuse to start.

• Remember to place periods (.) in zone files after all FQDNs and omit them on hostnames.

  A period at the end of a domain name denotes a fully qualified domain name. If the period is omitted, then named appends the name of the zone or the $ORIGIN value to complete it.

• If a firewall is blocking connections from the named program to other nameservers, edit its configuration file.

  named to use port 53 by adding the following line to the options statement of /etc/named.conf:

  query-source address * port 53;