DNS Error Question

[PaulReed]

I have CentOS 3.9 installed on my server... after everything I've read it seems that all the files that should be there are, including named.conf, resolv.conf, and there are a few zone files under /var/named.

I was suggested from something I read to do the following...
chkconfig --add named
chkconfig --levels 2345 named on
chkconfig --levels 016 named off

I did this, and ran chkconfig --list | grep named

the result were:

named 0ff 1ff 2n 3n 4n 5n 6ff.

I started the named service sucessfully, but when I did a nslookup -sil I recieved an error on "localhost"

Server: 66.241.143.34
Address: 66.241.143.34#53

** server can't find localhost: NXDOMAIN

I'm getting many errors in my logfile like this...
ERROR: (3060657072) dns::mx_list* dns::resolver::get_mx(const std::string&) dnsresolver.cc(223): No address associated with $


I'm new at this and my question is...

1) What else do I need other than what's installed and what zone files do I need and how should they read?

2) Is there anything else I can do to make this as good as I can because I email a newsletter to fair amount of members?

3) Out of curiosity is this incomplete so far being that the zone files aren't complete. I do have the main zone file mentioning all the DNS sites.

4) One last thing can I make it any more effienent by using nameservers from somewhere else other than my hosting company?

I'd really appreciate some help, I'm getting quite a few errors in my logfile.

Thanks

 

[elgrandeperro]

So is 66.241.143.34 the IP of your box or another nameserver?

The nameserver will respond (if correctly configured) with:

nslookup localhost 127.0.0.1

should return something like localhost.YOURDOMAIN.

The naming/resolver only uses the nameservers listed in /etc/resolv.conf. Bringing up named does not update this file. I would not add my nameserver (127.0.0.1) unless you know it is running correctly.

If you are a "mailer", you probably want to be a caching only nameserver. That means, you only want the root.cache, localhost and reverse 127 net files. If your hosting company disallows outbound 53, then you will need to add some forwarding lines. Being a caching nameserver means you only need to query once for an email address, and until the TTL for that record expires, you "know" it.

I've run caching only servers with email servers for years and this is always the most efficient setup.