I wanted to set up a little DNS server behind my firewall just to serve the pc's on my home network, and nothing else. Bind doesn't seem to be much help. I can successfully get named to start but it rejects any requests to identify any of the canonical names I have put in the zone config files. I get <server can't find domain SERVFAIL > I am pretty sure I set up the zones and stuff correctly, but then again, with the weird configuration I would like to set up it's very possible that I didn't. If anyone has any suggestions about configuration they would be greatly appreciated !!

Thanks, Jeff

You have to put the zones you want to serve in named.conf.

Define "weird configuration"?

Check out a howto (this one is a bit dated) for more info.

Weird meaning I'm didn't register a public domain name and didn't put the .in.addr.arpa in the root zone file. I actually got it to start working with some help from the link you put in your reply (thank you ! ) and also from reconfiguring my ipchains.