Introduction

Bind server is an open-source, highly reliable, and scalable Domain Name System (DNS) software that is responsible for translating human-readable domain names into IP addresses. In this tutorial, we will walk you through the installation and configuration of the Bind server on Ubuntu 20.04.

Prerequisites

• Ubuntu 20.04 server
• Sudo privileges

Install Bind

Step 1: Update and Upgrade the System

Before installing any package, it is recommended to update and upgrade the system to the latest version.

$ sudo apt update $ sudo apt upgrade

Step 2: Install Bind

The Bind package is available in the Ubuntu system repository. To install Bind, execute the command below.

$ sudo apt install bind9 bind9utils bind9-doc

Step 3: Check the Bind Service Status

After the installation, Bind service should be running. You can check the status of the service with the below command.

$ sudo systemctl status bind9

Configure Bind

Step 1: Create a Zone File

To configure Bind, you need to create the zone file for your domain. A zone file contains the DNS records for a specific domain. In this example, we will create a zone file for the domain example.com.

Create a new file named example.com.db in the /etc/bind/ directory.

$ sudo nano /etc/bind/example.com.db

Add the following lines to create the zone file.

$TTL 3D @ IN SOA ns1.example.com. admin.example.com. ( 1 ; Serial 8H ; Refresh 2H ; Retry 4W ; Expire 1D) ; Minimum TTL ; @ IN NS ns1.example.com. @ IN NS ns2.example.com. ns1 IN A 10.0.0.10 ns2 IN A 10.0.0.20

Here, TTL stands for Time To Live, and Serial is the version number of the zone file. The line starting with @ character represents the domain, and NS stands for Name Server.

Step 2: Create a Reverse Zone File

Next, you need to create the reverse zone file to map IP addresses to their corresponding domain names. Create a new file named 0.0.10.in-addr.arpa.db in the /etc/bind/ directory.

$ sudo nano /etc/bind/0.0.10.in-addr.arpa.db

Add the following lines to create the reverse zone file.

$TTL 3D @ IN SOA ns1.example.com. admin.example.com. ( 1 ; Serial 8H ; Refresh 2H ; Retry 4W ; Expire 1D) ; Minimum TTL ; @ IN NS ns1.example