The purpose of this chapter was not necessarily to tackle the issues associated with DNS configuration, as there are many books that deal with this subject comprehensively. However, it was engendered to approach the subject of DNS in relation to it being a function of the services available on a network. The consequence of this was to illustrate a few basic techniques associated with the art of troubleshooting an authoritative or caching domain nameserver that may be exhibiting difficulties during the performance of its role.

So, from changing the hostname to checking the bandwidth, flushing the cache to running some standard sanity checks, you should be aware that troubleshooting is not always about installing and configuring packages. In many respects, very few professional troubleshooters will find themselves building a system from scratch, but they will be asked to fix an apparent issue that, in the context of this book, is typically something more immediate, if not intrinsic...