Re: Newbie Question: How do I assign my Address to my IP ? ..

Hi Josh,

> I currently am in control of www.mmpmuds.net and I'm running it through
> no-ip.com and I want to get rid of no-ip.com and just have my server run
> the  name as its own without having to go through a 3rd party to have
> the name.

Okay, so you want to host your own domain. It's actually simpler than you
might expect, but there are some gotchas. The domain portion is only a
part of the battle; the server portion is where the fun really begins.

To get the domain pointed to your server, you need to change dns server or
have your present dns host point the domain to your server by having them
change the resource records for the domain. Contact your domain registrar
to make the changes either way.

If you're going to do your own domain name services, you need to set up
dns. The easiest is probably bind9, just be aware that there are security
concerns and that you should go to the CERT site and get on the CERT
advisory list. A more secure dns system is dbjdns, but it's a little more
complex and a whole lot less intuitive to set up from a starting position.

If you're going to host the domain on your server, you need to decide what
services you want and what you will use to serve them. For most simple
domains, you'll probably be looking at web, mail and ftp. I suggest
apache, postfix and wu-ftpd for starters, after you get these going you
can make decisions about other servers like qmail and pro-ftpd.

It can't be stressed enough the importance of reading and understanding
the conceptual papers about running dns and mail. The email administrators
howto will give you a good 10,000 foot overview about mail services in
general; likewise for the bind9 howto for dns.

These 2 services in particular are very important to understand in depth
before messing with them as they run the Internet, and you can mess up a
lot more than just your servers if you make big fubars in your
configurations.

Get on the mailing lists for all the services you run for a while, at
least until you get to know the ins and outs of running them. They'll give
you some depth of knowledge about the vulnerabilities, strengths and
weaknesses of each. No software is perfect.

Good luck with it.
-- 
Keith Mastin
BeechTree Information Technology Services Inc.
Toronto, Canada
(416)696 6070