Thanks for your suggestions and the two people who replied off list. This will probably work well without too much time invested :-)
On Wednesday 19 March 2003 12:32 am, Marcin Sochacki wrote: > On Tue, Mar 18, 2003 at 11:13:50AM -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > As a favor to a friend, I'm trying to setup a mirror of his server, > > where I can basically be a 'hotswap' for him. So far, the main problem > > that I'm running into is that everything is ip-based. For instance, > > it's dead-simple to be a secondary dns server for him, but if his box > > (which hosts dns, web, and mail) goes down, then I'm simply pointing > > people into dead-space, right? Well, email is the one standout, where > > the MX records would get them to my machine, but I'm having a hard time > > figuring out how to make web and dns do the same thing. > > If you're hosting secondary DNS, it shouldn't be too difficult. > First, change the default TTL of your zone to a very low value, like one > minute. This way you'll almost prevent caching of DNS records on other > hosts. > > When your (secondary) machine detects, that the primary one is dead, > you should swap the configuration files for your bind, and make yourself > a primary, and the only one nameserver for the particular domain, > with the addresses pointing to your machine. Reload bind, and from > that moment all HTTP requests should start hitting your server. > > You should constantly monitor if the primary machine comes back online, > and if it does -- swap the bind configuration back to original state. > > It also means, that you should parse the mirrored httpd.conf and change > the IP in VirtualHost to your address. > > I don't think you need any special software -- everything can be done > with a couple of scripts in your favourite scripting language. > > Marcin -- MuMlutlitithtrhreeaadededd s siigngnatatuurere D.A.Bishop