Setting up Bind9 as a forwarding DNS server

Ref: https://www.richinfante.com/2020/02/21/bind9-on-my-lan

 I recently installed bind9 on one of my raspberry pi’s to use as a dns server for my lan. Here’s my notes from the setup:

Installing BIND9

sudo apt install bind9 bind9utils bind9-doc

Configuring as a Forwarder

Configuration files for bind(9) are located in the /etc/bind directory. We can edit the named.conf.options file to configure our server as a forwarder.

// This is the local lan acl, configure to your subnet.
acl local-lan {
  localhost;
  192.168.1.0/24;
};

options {
  directory "/var/cache/bind";

  // If there is a firewall between you and nameservers you want
  // to talk to, you may need to fix the firewall to allow multiple
  // ports to talk.  See http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/800113

  // If your ISP provided one or more IP addresses for stable
  // nameservers, you probably want to use them as forwarders.
  // Uncomment the following block, and insert the addresses replacing
  // the all-0's placeholder.

  forwarders {
    1.1.1.1; // Cloudflare
    8.8.8.8; // Google
  };

  allow-query { local-lan; };

  //========================================================================
  // If BIND logs error messages about the root key being expired,
  // you will need to update your keys.  See https://www.isc.org/bind-keys
  //========================================================================
  dnssec-enable no;

  dnssec-validation no;
   


  auth-nxdomain no;    // conform to RFC1035
  listen-on-v6 { any; };

  // Additional config for our usage
  recursion yes;
  querylog yes; // Disable if you want, nice for debugging.
  version "not available"; // Disable for security
};