HELP! I am in a BIND.

[karron at KARRON.MED.NYU.EDU]

I have an unusual situation where I wish to run BIND as a local server, but
my machine is generally a network client.

When named is running, my machine looks to a domain host for info as to
who it is. If that machine is not running, or my machine is disconnected
from the net, it will NOT boot. This is not a good situation to be in.

I am trying to configure my machine to only know a minimal ammount of
information about itself and a few other vital machines on the net. The
static host table is not used by the named BIND stuff, and all queries
for static info without named running fail (The /etc/hosts and named should
not ignore each other, but that is another thing that will have to be
fixed).  My resolver.conf file has slots for three nameservers. I want
my machine to be first, the domain server second, and the super domain
server third. The documentation says to specify the local host as
0.0.0.0, not localhost, or loopback. nslookup does not seem to be able to
query the local host named, and so I am wondering if the way I want to
run this is possible ?

I only want to keep minimal info, really, only about my machine on my local
server, and let it cache info about the net locally. If it is possible,
can I have my machine distribute info about itself to the other name servers ?

Is there any scripts that can turn an /etc/hosts file into a named.hosts file ?

While I have every confidence in the net people here, the local medical
center computer operations does not have any budget, no maintence contracts,
and no support from the medical center administration for network services.
The general consensus about the research computing network it that it is an
expersive toy. If it goes down, then if enough people scream, things may
get fixed. This is not the trusted host paradign that most network protocols
are designed around. Is what I want to do possible ?

dan(paranoid, and proud of it)

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