First, make sure Bind is not installed and update your system:

aptitude remove bind9 bind9-doc
apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade

Then install Mysql if you've not installed yet:

aptitude install mysql-server mysql-clients
mysqladmin -u root -h localhost password 'mypassword'

Then install the PowerDNS server and the MySQL backend:

aptitude install pdns-server pdns-backend-mysql

Now create an emepty MySQL database and user with priviledges to access that database.

Then import the MySQL schema shipped with PowerDNS:

mysql -u root -p

create database powerdns;

exit

mysql -h localhost -u username -p powerdns < /usr/share/doc/pdns-backend-mysql/mysql.sql

Configure your database settings:

/etc/powerdns/pdns.d/pdns.local

gmysql-host=localhost
gmysql-port=3306
gmysql-dbname=powerdns
gmysql-user=powerdns
gmysql-password=password
#gmysql-socket=

Configure PowerDNS as shown below:

/etc/power-dns/pdns.conf

launch=gmysql
allow-recursion=127.0.0.1, 1.2.3.4, 5.6.7.8
local-address=1.2.3.4
out-of-zone-additional-processing=yes

Then finally restart PowerDNS:

/etc/init.d/pdns restart

Check syslog for errors then populate your database and test.

Install the PowerDNS recursor:

aptitude install pdns-recursor

Then configure the PowerDNS recursive server settings:

/etc/powerdns/recursor.conf

allow-from=127.0.0.1
local-address=127.0.0.1
local-port=53

Then reconfigure the PowerDNS server to pass recursive lookups through to your recursive server:

/etc/power-dns/pdns.conf

recursor=127.0.0.1

Finally restart pdns and pdns-recursor:

/etc/init.d/pdns restart
/etc/init.d/pdns-recursor restart

- PDNS Admin (http://freshmeat.net/projects/pdns-admin/)
– PowerAdmin (http://www.poweradmin.org/)
– PowerDNS Administration (http://sourceforge.net/projects/powerdnsadmin/)
– TUPA (http://www.tupa-dns.org/)
– WebDNS (http://freshmeat.net/projects/webdns/)
– ZoneAdmin (http://freshmeat.net/projects/zoneadmin/)

You can use the zone2sql utility shipped with PowerDNS to import your existing Bind zone files to your MySQL database. You’ll need a copy of your named.conf.local file and your zone files for it to import from:

zone2sql --named-conf=/etc/bind/named.conf.local --gmysql > ~/zone2sql.sql
mysql -h db.example.com -u username -p powerdns < ~/zone2sql.sql