[jherington]

First of all, you guys got it working....Thanks Very Much!!!!!

As for the hosts file, the address you refer to was because I was working on this at home and I have a different address there...so 192.0.0.180 is correct.

As for named.conf and the associated internal zone file...I simplified as per your suggestion and followed the split-domain example.

1) Renamed original named and zone files and added new files with the contents discribed in the split-domain article.

2) I made sure the owner of all files in /var/named/chroot/etc was 'named' (this I was always doing but named will not start if I leave this step off)

3) Tried 'dig itsa.zimdomain.zim mx' and 'nslookup itsa.zimdomain.zim' and got back:

[root@itsa etc]# dig itsa.zimdomain.zim mx

; <<>> DiG 9.3.3rc2 <<>> itsa.zimdomain.zim mx
;; global options:  printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 27733
;; flags: qr aa rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;itsa.zimdomain.zim.            IN      MX

;; ANSWER SECTION:
itsa.zimdomain.zim.     2592000 IN      MX      10 itsa.zimdomain.zim.

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
itsa.zimdomain.zim.     2592000 IN      NS      192.0.0.180.itsa.zimdomain.zim.

;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
itsa.zimdomain.zim.     2592000 IN      A       192.0.0.180

;; Query time: 6 msec
;; SERVER: 192.0.0.180#53(192.0.0.180)
;; WHEN: Tue Nov 13 15:42:34 2007
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 94

[root@itsa etc]#

[root@itsa etc]# nslookup
> itsa.zimdomain.zim
Server:         192.0.0.180
Address:        192.0.0.180#53

Name:   itsa.zimdomain.zim
Address: 192.0.0.180
>

4) I believe the big difference was that within named.conf I used the actual name of the host.domain as the zone name:

options {
       directory "/var/named";
       dump-file "/etc/data/cache_dump.db";
       statistics-file "/etc/data/named_stats.txt";
forwarders { 202.63.164.17; 202.63.164.18; };
};

include "/etc/rndc.key";

// We are the master server for itsa.zimdomain.zim
zone "itsa.zimdomain.zim" {
    type master;
    file "/etc/my.internal.zone.db";
};

5) And/or possible the difference came in the zone file, where in stead of using the host and/or domain name for the NS and A records I used the associated IP address:

@       IN      SOA     itsa.zimdomain.zim. hostmaster.itsa.zimdomain.zim. (
                               10118      ; Serial
                               43200      ; Refresh
                               3600       ; Retry
                               3600000    ; Expire
                               2592000 )  ; Minimum
;       Define the nameservers and the mail servers
               IN      NS      192.0.0.180
               IN      A       192.0.0.180
               IN      MX      10 itsa.zimdomain.zim.

Thanks Again!