Hi, folks!

Hopefully someone can help me out with this...

I have an account which I have access to the full DNS records - can someone explain to me what SOA is, and what kind of optimum settings I should have? I sort of get the gist of it - that it has something to do with how often nameservers reload DNS information from my DNS records... is that correct and everything there is to it?

Also, how exactly do MX records work?

And finally (sorry) - if I have two domains pointing at the same IP, is it possible for me to have the second domain resolve at a different folder/file than the first, or is this something I have to set up with my host? My DNS service offers something called URL pointing - is this what I'd use for what I need?

I'd really prefer the answer dumbed down a bit - I wholeheartedly admit that the DNS side leaves me a bit confused. I tried looking at the O'Reilly DNS & BIND book and it made my head spin...

Thanks!
Neil

Neil,

Don't worry - DNS can be a bit icky at first but once you get the hang of it it's quite easy.

SOA stands for start of authority and it indicates to the rest of the DNS servers around the Internet that a particular name server (that is, the one it's on) is the best source of data for this zone. It gives numerical information as to how often DNS information should be reloaded; when the record was last updated; the e-mail address (or person) responsible for updating the DNS records, etc.

Optimally you should have something like this :

movie.edu. IN SOA wokadoo.1ssg.com bc.1ssg.com

1 ; Serial
10800 ; Refresh after 3 hours
3600 ; Retry after 1 hour
604800 ; Expire after 1 week
86500 ) ; Minimum TTL of 1 day. (TTL = time to live)

MX (mail exchanger) records work by prioritising the order in which mail is delivered to certain servers.

So say you have two mail servers - mail1.1ssg.com and mail2.1ssg.com

Your MX records will probably look like :

10 MX mail1.1ssg.com
20 MX mail2.1ssg.com

The 10 and 20 indicate the 'order/priority' with which the e-mail should be tried. So mail1.1ssg.com has the higher priority (the lower the no., the higher the priority) and mail to 1ssg.com from somewhere else should be sent to mail1.1ssg.com first. If that doesn't succeed, then it can try the other servers.

Note : the 10/20 are arbitrary values; that is, they have no meaning. It's the order you place them in :)

And finally, yes, if you have two domains pointing at the same IP you can have the second domain resolve to a different folder - but you must set it up with your host. They will edit the necessary configuration files to allow you to implement such a feature. URL pointing sounds like what it is.

Good luck.

Originally posted by theNonsuch
And finally (sorry) - if I have two domains pointing at the same IP, is it possible for me to have the second domain resolve at a different folder/file than the first, or is this something I have to set up with my host? My DNS service offers something called URL pointing - is this what I'd use for what I need?

Yes to what BC said. If your server is using apache, there is an attribute called DocumentRoot in the httpd.conf file. This will have the absolute path for that partticular virtual domain, among other things.