19.3.4. Reverse Name Resolution Zone Files
A reverse name resolution zone file is used to translate an IP address in a particular namespace into an FQDN. It looks very similar to a standard zone file, except that
PTR
resource records are used to link the IP addresses to a fully qualified domain name.
The following illustrates the layout of a
PTR
record:
<last-IP-digit> IN PTR <FQDN-of-system>
The <last-IP-digit> is the last number in an IP address which points to a particular system's FQDN.
In the following example, IP addresses
10.0.1.1
through 10.0.1.6
are pointed to corresponding FQDNs. It can be located in /var/named/example.com.rr.zone
.
$ORIGIN 1.0.10.in-addr.arpa. $TTL 86400 @ IN SOA dns1.example.com. hostmaster.example.com. ( 2001062501 ; serial 21600 ; refresh after 6 hours 3600 ; retry after 1 hour 604800 ; expire after 1 week 86400 ) ; minimum TTL of 1 day ; @ IN NS dns1.example.com. ; 1 IN PTR dns1.example.com. 2 IN PTR dns2.example.com. ; 5 IN PTR server1.example.com. 6 IN PTR server2.example.com. ; 3 IN PTR ftp.example.com. 4 IN PTR ftp.example.com.
This zone file would be called into service with a
zone
statement in the named.conf
file similar to the following:
zone "1.0.10.in-addr.arpa" IN { type master; file "example.com.rr.zone"; allow-update { none; }; };
There is very little difference between this example and a standard
zone
statement, except for the zone name. Note that a reverse name resolution zone requires the first three blocks of the IP address reversed followed by .in-addr.arpa
. This allows the single block of IP numbers used in the reverse name resolution zone file to be associated with the zone.