Zonefile exampleο
On this page we give an example of a basic zone file and itβs contents.
We recommend using the nsd-checkzone tool to verify that you have a working zone.
Creating a zoneο
A minimal zone needs exactly one SOA (Source Of Authority) and one or more NS (Name Server) records. Refer to appropriate documentation if you need to learn about DNS basics.
$ORIGIN example.com.
$TTL 86400 ; default time-to-live for this zone
example.com. IN SOA ns.example.com. noc.dns.example.org. (
2020080302 ;Serial
7200 ;Refresh
3600 ;Retry
1209600 ;Expire
3600 ;Negative response caching TTL
)
; The nameservers that are authoritative for this zone.
NS example.com.
; A and AAAA records are for IPv4 and IPv6 addresses respectively
example.com. A 192.0.2.1
AAAA 2001:db8::3
; A CNAME redirects from www.example.com to example.com
www CNAME example.com.
mail MX 10 example.com.
Note
In the example above the SOA record class is set to: IN. The record class is omitted in the remaining records, in which case the resulting value will be set from the preceding record.
Meaning the NS, A and MX source records have implicitly the IN record class.
Note
The first domain in the SOA (start of authority) record, is the authoritative master name server for the zone.
The second domain is actually the administrator email addresss for this zone. Where the first dot (.) will be converted into an @ sign.
So in this example above, the email is: noc@dns.example.org. If you have a dot in the local-part of the email address, you need to backslash the dot.
Note
You can use the @ symbol in the zone file for a shortcut to the origin of the zone domain.
Meaning example.com. IN SOA could also have been written to: @ IN SOA. Same can be applied to other records as well, like the A record: @ A 192.0.2.1. Which is the same as: example.com. A 192.0.2.1