Zone File Naming Convention

Everyone has their own ideas on a good naming convention and thus something that is supposed to be useful becomes contentious.

Here is a convention that is in daily use. Its sole merits are; it is a convention; it makes sense to its authors.

1. All zone files are placed in /var/named/ (for Windows users this would be %systemroot%\system32\drivers\etc). The base directory contains all the housekeeping zone files (e.g. localhost, reverse-mapping, root.servers etc.) with a subdirectory structure used as follows:

   1. /var/named/master - master zone files
   2. /var/named/slave - slave zones files
   3. /var/named/views - where views are used

2. master files are named master.example.com (or master.example.net etc.) if its a sub-domain it will be master.sub-domain.example.com etc.

3. slave zone files are named slave.example.com (or slave.example.ca etc.) if its a sub-domain it will be slave.sub-domain.example.com etc.

4. The root server zone file is called root.servers (typically called named.ca or named.root in BIND distributions).

5. The reverse mapping file name uses the subnet number and .rev i.e.. if the zone is '23.168.192.IN-ADDR.ARPA' the file is called 192.168.23.rev to save having to reverse the digits at 3AM in a blind panic.

6. The 'localhost' zone file is called master.localhost (typically called localhost.zone on BIND distributions). The reverse mapping file is called localhost.rev (typically called named.local in BIND distributions).