Configuring and Deploying DNS servers (primary, secondary, root and cache on centos 6.5) - Part 1 - Primary DNS

Make sure you have connection to the internet before you attempt this.

• Install BIND packages that provides DNS service
•  yum install bind bind-utils bind-chroot bind-libs
• Edit the main file /etc/named.conf

listen-on port 53 { 192.168.12.2; }; //change this to your ip address
*Remove the allow-query line
zone "msm.net" IN { //chnage msm.net to your zone
        type master;
        file "msm.net.db"; //you can name it anything
};

zone "12.168.192.in-addr.arpa" IN { //this is for reverse lookup the zone will be                                                       //different for different ip address
        type master;
        file "12.168.192.rev.zone.db";
};

*Optional: remove the "." zone to disable caching.

• Now create the "msm.net.db" file in /var/named and edit it (forward lookup)
• vi 'msm.net.db'

$TTL 86400
@       IN   SOA  ns.msm.net.   nameserver.ns.msm.net. (
                        535 ; serial
                        3H ; refresh
                        15M ; retry
                        1W ; expiry
                        1D ) ; minimum
@                       IN      NS    ns.msm.net. //change this to match your domain
ns                      IN      A       192.168.12.2 //these are the dns records
slave                   IN      A       192.168.12.3
root                    IN      A       192.168.12.4
cache                   IN      A       192.168.12.5

•  Now create "12.168.192.rev.zone.db" and edit it
• vi '12.168.192.rev.zone.db'

 $TTL 86400
@       IN   SOA  ns.msm.net.   nameserver.ns.msm.net. (
                        2009092300 ; serial
                        2880 ; refresh
                        14400 ; retry
                        3600000 ; expiry
                        86400  ; minimum

);
//change the values according to your records and domain name
@               IN      NS    ns.msm.net.
2               IN      PTR     ns.msm.net.
3               IN      PTR     slave.msm.net.
4               IN      PTR     root.msm.net.
5               IN      PTR     cache.msm.net.

• Open the firewall ports
• iptables -I INPUT -p tcp --dport 53 -j ACCEPT
• iptables -I INPUT -p udp --dport 53 -j ACCEPT

•  Start the named daemon
• service named start

 *NOTE: if you get this error "Generating /etc/rndc.key:" then try to open another ssh window and give some user input, try issuing some command while it is saying this error, or open the VM GUI and open the web browser. Comment if you could not resolve this error.

• check logs if your server started properly
• tail -30 /var/log/messages

• Edit /etc/resolve.conf to tell the system to resolve DNS queries locally through our newly created primary server
• vi /etc/resolve.conf

search msm.net
nameserver 192.168.12.2

• check your deployment using nslookup
• nslookup
• ns.msm.net
• 192.168.12.2

Let me know in the comments if there are any issues. 

Prefer a video walk-through?
Here is a video I made of my deployment.