Use djbdns instead of Bind9! (http://packages.debian.org/stable/net/djbdns-installer)

Although you have to compile it, it is easy to set up and secure.

You can replace bind9 and dhcpd with dnsmasq which should perfectly suit your needs :
* DNS forwarder
* local machines name serving

Use lwresd

http://packages.debian.org/stable/net/lwresd

Besides knowing which software package to use for your dns server, you might also wonder what local domain name to configure. What follows are my personal rules of thumb for a sane configuration, but it ain't "the only strict way" of course. (I haven't seen the light, yet.)

First question: do you have an domain of yourself?
If yes, use a private subdomain (like home.domain.com) for your LAN. Avoid using your plain domain directly, that gives you an illogic namespace, especially when - as most of us - behind a NAT device.
If not, use a totally private domain, like home.lan. But don't use home.com or any other domain that isn't yours. Strictly speaking, you should use a top level domain name according to rfc 2606, but the official choices ( .test .example .invalid .localhost) are quite limited, and do not provide a proper tld for private lans, which is why I prefer using a private subdomain of a real domain. This stuff is why IPv6 rules btw :)

Furthermore, don't forget to
- configure reverse lookup zones
- configure records in accordance with you dhcp addresses; mac based reservations linked to dns names instead of ip addresses can be a nice alternative to dynamic dns.

I welcome any comments on this and wonder how other DSA's [1] do it.

--

Serge van Ginderachter

[1] Debian System Administrators

Simplest case, create a recursive resolver using bind9 for Debian.

"apt-get install bind9"

To add a BIND 9 zone to the above;

$EDITOR /etc/bind/named.conf.local add something like;

zone "example.com" {
type master;
file "/etc/bind/example.com.zone";
};
(also uncomment the RFC1918 line if applicable).

Create example.com.zone
$TTL 1D
@ IN SOA thisbox.example.com. root.example.com. (
200406011 ; serial
3600 ; refresh
3600 ; retry
3600 ; expire
3h ) ; -ve TTL
;
NS thisbox ; nameserver

thisbox IN A 10.0.0.1

Do similar for the approprate in-addr.arpa zone as well for completeness.

Then reload "rndc reload" (hopefully - I forget if rndc configures itself out of the box).

For dynamic updates to these zone from the DHCP server - see my muttering on such elsewhere. But I think dynamic DNS is a waste of time, put services on boxes that don't move or allocate static IP addresses via DHCP using the mac address.

I'm with the others that this is overkill, unless you are just trying to understand how to do it properly. But then it only took me a few minutes because I've done a lot of it before.

I'd use dnsmasq for a small network. Nice and easy.