Due to its characteristics, DNS is vital.
Any kind of Internet presence or access requires it.
Many other infrastructure services take advantage of it.
It doesn't replace NIS, but supersedes the hosts map.
NIS has a known DNS-forwarding mode (see nsswitch.conf(4)) where it forwards host names and addresses lookup requests to DNS if it doesn't have the information on its own databases. This possible integration, together with the further variations on the hosts database source list of the Name Services Switch, can lead to unexpected resolutions and subtle issues. Hence, except for specific cases, it may indeed be better to adopt the following host database source list:
hosts: files dns nisNowadays we also have the alternative of multicast DNS and the now reserved .local pseudo-TLD name is used for it. The on-line documentation also talks about it as well as man pages mdnsd(1M) and dns-sd(1M). It has to do with the zero-configuration networking and Apples's Bonjour implementation whose open source framework and tools is present in Solaris. But being restricted to local area networks, at least for now, I won't enable it. One notable exception is when setting up the Automated Installer Framework, which requires enabling it.
# svcs dns/multicast
STATE STIME FMRI
disabled Jan_07 svc:/network/dns/multicast:default
These DNS series of blog posts will primarily cover traditional DNS, a.k.a. unicast DNS. I do not yet know how deep I'll go with my descriptions and examples, but I intend to visit the basics alongside benefits and advantages of implementing it under Solaris.
So these are the main posts:
For further detail I'd point to:
- DNS & BIND - O'Reilly
- InterNIC FAQs
