Bonjour Dynamic Global Hostname on Mac OS X

If one has an own domain name, for instance, example.com, and a Debian GNU/Linux host with a static IP address, for instance, 1.2.3.4, plus both primary and secondary name servers pointing to the host itself, it is possible to configure Bonjour dynamic global hostname feature on Mac OS X client. The following steps explain the procedure.

First, on Linux host, type sudo apt-get install bind9. Then, generate a secret shared key configuration by typing sudo rndc-confgen -r /dev/urandom -a -c /etc/bind/bonjour.key -k example.com. and setting the owner of the file to the bind user by sudo chown bind:bind /etc/bind/bonjour.key.

Second, in /var/cache/bind directory, create a zone file named example.com.db and owned by bind user with the following contents:

$ORIGIN .
$TTL 120	; 2 minutes
example.com		IN SOA	ns1.example.com. info.example.com. (
				2007011542 ; serial
				7200       ; refresh (2 hours)
				120        ; retry (2 minutes)
				2419200    ; expire (4 weeks)
				604800     ; minimum (1 week)
				)
			NS	ns1.example.com.
			NS	ns2.example.com.
			A	1.2.3.4
			MX	10 mail.example.com.
$ORIGIN _dns-sd._udp.example.com.
$TTL 120	; 2 minutes
b			PTR	example.com.
lb			PTR	example.com.
r			PTR	example.com.
$ORIGIN _udp.example.com.
_dns-update		SRV	0 0 53 ns1.example.com.
$ORIGIN example.com.
mail			A	1.2.3.4
ns1			A	1.2.3.4
ns2			A	1.2.3.4

Now, we can add the following lines to /etc/bind/named.conf.local file and restart the service by typing /etc/init.d/bind9 restart:

include "/etc/bind/bonjour.key";

zone "example.com" {
	type master;
	file "example.com.db";
	allow-update { key example.com.; };
};

When the DNS service is running on the Linux host, it is time to configure the Mac client. It is easier to set up a preference pane from DNS-SD. On that preference pane, enter the desired fully qualified domain name, for instance, mac.example.com as well as the password which is basically the shared key from /etc/bind/bonjour.key file on the Linux host. The right hand side dot turning green indicates successful configuration, that is, the chosen hostname is now pointing to the Mac client.