Plesk 5.0 Slave DNS configuration

Steps:

1. Set up slave DNS zone
2. Allow zone transfers from master to slave server(s)
3. Check slave server pulling zones and answering for the domain.

By default the DNS templates on Plesk do not allow zone transfers. In order to provide slave DNS for your sites, you will need to allow the slave nameserver to transfer zones from your BIND server to the slave by adding the IP to the DNS template database (the misc table in plesk).

The slave nameserver simply needs to have a record such as the following added to it's named.conf file:

zone "domain.com" {
type slave;
file "db.domain.com";
masters { 1.2.4.5; };
};

Where masters contains the IP address of your master DNS server and domain.com is the domain to provide slave DNS.

Setting Up Slave DNS under Plesk 5.0 is not possible in the control panel. You must add a record to the DNS template database manually in order to have BIND allow a zone transfer. Setting IPs for allowing DNS zones transfer, requires adding to the 'misc' table parameter DNS_Allow_Transfer% (where "%" is a unique combination of letters or numbers) and the
slave DNS IP as the value. Enter the following on one line (edit the IP address first):

/usr/local/psa/mysql/bin/mysql -uadmin -p -D psa -e "insert misc values ('DNS_Allow_TransferXX', '1.2.3.4')"

when prompted for the password, enter the admin (control panel) password.
 

Adding a second slave to do DNS zone transfer requires adding another entry with a unique letter or number combo at the end.

/usr/local/psa/mysql/bin/mysql -uadmin -p -D psa -e "insert misc values ('DNS_Allow_TransferXY', '2.3.4.5')"

Be careful not to corrupt named.conf with malformed IPs. Also remember to add the domains to the slave servers named.conf file and restart named on the slave and master DNS server. You can restart BIND in Plesk through the control panel. We recommend stopping and then starting the BIND server rather than using the restart option.
 

Note: If you already have existing zones that do not allow transfer, you can manually add the IP to the named.conf file but if you do not add the IP to the database correctly, the next time the zone is edited, your changes will be gone.