Network Administration: BIND Zone Files

Each zone for which your DNS server is authoritative should have a zone file, named domain.zone and located in the /var/named directory. If you like to edit DNS records directly, you can create this file yourself. Or you can use the point-and-click interface of the Fedora BIND configuration tool to automatically create the file.

Here’s a typical zone file, named lowewriter.com.zone:

$TTL 86400
@     IN    SOA   ns207.pair.com.  root.localhost (
                  2 ; serial
                  28800 ; refresh
                  7200 ; retry
                  604800 ; expire
                  86400 ; ttl
                  )
      IN    NS    ns000.ns0.com.
      IN    NS    ns207.pair.com.
@     IN    MX    1    sasi.pair.com.
www   IN    A     209.68.34.15

The following table lists the most common types of records that appear in zone files.

Common Resource Record Types

Type	Name	Description
SOA	Start Of Authority	Identifies a zone.
NS	Name Server	Identifies a name server that is authoritative for the zone.
A	Address	Maps a fully qualified domain name to an IP address.
CNAME	Canonical Name	Creates an alias for a fully qualified domain name.
MX	Mail Exchange	Identifies the mail server for a domain.
PTR	Pointer	Maps an IP address to a fully qualified domain name for reverse lookups.

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Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/network-administration-bind-zone-files.html