: I assume that you are not talking about setting up a root name server. Apart from the fact that you should be sure why you need a publicly accessible DNS server, the procedure to set one

I assume that you are not talking about setting up a root name server.

Apart from the fact that you should be sure why you need a publicly accessible DNS server, the procedure to set one up is quite simple. Usually, you would set up a DNS server which has records of the IP addresses and corresponding host names for your local network. If it is asked for some other host (e.g. host "www" on the domain "whitehouse.gov"), it will ask another DNS server for an authoritative answer and pass the answer on to the client.

The standard DNS server software is Bind, which is open source and can be compiled for all platforms you may think of. It is well documented. Apart from the IP/host name records you need to cover your local network (which nobody else knows, and probably not even sees behind a NAT service), you need to point Bind to the root name servers, usually through a file called root.cache. Then you need to announce your DNS to the hosts on your(!) network, e.g. via DHCP.

If your network is publicly accessible and you need to provide DNS (meaning not only access to the NAT gateway, and the occasional "www", "ftp" or "shell" host of your own domain), you should probably not proceed as a complete newbie ;-)

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