The DNS & BIND Cookbook presents solutions to the many problems faced by network administrators responsible for a name server. This title is an indispensable companion to DNS & BIND, 4th Edition, the definitive guide to the critical task of name server administration. The cookbook contains dozens of code recipes showing solutions to everyday problems, ranging from simple questions, like, "How do I get BIND?" to more advanced topics like providing name service for IPv6 addresses.
This book is designed to "round you out" as a name server administrator by showing you just what you can do with BIND and how to do it, from the straightforward (the 10 English words with a "Q" but no "U") to the intricate (all the bingos you can make with SATINE plus a blank).
This book expressly doesn't concentrate on DNS theory. For that, I'd (not surprisingly) recommend DNS and BIND. Without an understanding of the theory behind DNS, you're like the Southeast Asian Scrabble players who memorize the spelling -- but not the meaning or pronunciation -- of tens of thousands of English words: all syntax, no semantics.
As in other O'Reilly Cookbooks, the chapters in this book begin with simpler recipes and progress toward the more complex. The simpler recipes should be useful to anyone with a basic knowledge of DNS, while the more advanced may come in handy to even seasoned hostmasters. Each recipe starts with an explanation of a problem and a concise solution to that problem, followed by a more detailed explanation of the solution and, often, variations. At the end, you'll find references to other, related recipes and more complete coverage of the topics in DNS and BIND and elsewhere.
