Adding a secondary (slave) server for your zone

Find a partner

First, find someone in the room who is willing to be your partner for this lab.

Once you've identified them, write down:

1. The name of the zone they are hosting

2. The IP address of the server

Then, use dig to make sure the zone is indeed loaded properly and named is responding to queries for that name:

dig @ip.of.your.partner SOA zone_of_your_partner

If you get the expected answer (check 'aa' and that NS + SOA record are returned) you can move to the next step.

Add your partner's zone to your nameserver

Edit /etc/bind/named.conf.local, and add a configuration:

zone "zone_of_your_partner" {
    type slave;
    file "/var/cache/bind/db.zone_of_your_partner.slave";
    masters { ip.of.your.partner; };
};

Save and exit, then reconfigure bind:

sudo rndc reconfig

Will it work ?

You can test that the zone is loaded properly:

dig @localhost zone_of_your_partner SOA

What do you see ?