As some of you readers may know, I used to be a software engineer, and I continue to dabble in the black arts on an as-needed basis. So while photographers may be interested in this post (although I sincerely doubt it), I am writing it for a different audience. You see, I spent (wasted, really) the better part of a day trying to solve a problem, and was amazed that my constant and diligent Google searches yield surprisingly little (no) help. So, if you’re looking for help configuring DNS on your OS X Server (Leopard 10.5.4 at the moment, but I suspect it’ll be relevant to other builds as well), you’ve come to the right place. Well, at least you’ve made it somewhere. 
I have been migrating my old Linux router/server running on a 2-way Dell server to a quiet, nearly green Mac mini running OS X Leopard Server. I have been generally happy, although I finally cut over the last piece this past week and shut off the Linux server, and all hell broke loose. The last piece was DNS, and try as I might, I could not get my properly-delegated subnet to answer reverse DNS lookups. This ended up causing our email to Comcast, Yahoo, and others to start bouncing (they rightfully demand mail servers to answer with a proper reverse DNS lookup).
So, after screwing around with this problem all day, and getting nowhere (it’s DNS, for goodness’ sake…it’s been basically the same since the dawn of time!!!), I simply gave up.
I downloaded the BIND 9.5.0-P1 distro (source code), typed “configure”, “make” and “make install”. I then adjusted the OS X bind directories to go somewhere else, copied my Linux BIND config files onto the Mini, typed “named”, and lo and behold, it works.
I have no idea why Apple made the Leopard Server DNS stuff so painfully automatic…and wrong. If they’re selling a $1,000 server OS, they should not assume they’re dealing with newbies. Sigh.
Oh, and here’s a picture of my dog taken with a new 35/1.4 lens I just bought. =)
