From LQWiki

named is the actual daemon for BIND, the most common DNS name server for Linux.

Configuration of named can be quite complex, and needs several configuration files:

general configuration

general parameters, usually called named.conf tells where to find more DNS information.

root hints

root zone servers, usually called named.ca but names like db.cache, named.root or root.ca are also common.

localhost

resolver for the loopback address, usually called named.local

zone file

map hostnames to IP addresses, most of the DNS info is stored here. Usually given a descriptive name such as linuxquestions.org.hosts

reverse zone file

map IP addresses to hostnames. Usually given a descriptive name such as 192.168.1.rev

named is usually started during startup. On Red Hat/Fedora use the script:

  # /etc/rd.d/init.d/named start

A tool for managing the named process for BIND 8.x is ndc, the named control. BIND 9 has a similar tool rndc.