ProBIND2 (Re: DNS: BIND vs. WinDNS)
I found this post interesting, so I looked for ProBIND. Turns out there's ProBIND2, and it's SWEET. Worth looking at if you have a lot of DNS stuff to deal with. If you've already got BIND servers that work and you're just looking for a way to administer it with a pretty interface, rather than editing BIND configuration files, check out ProBIND. I recently set that up at a Windows show that already had BIND/Linux servers that most of the staff hated to touch and avoided at all cost. It doesn't get much easier than a pretty web gui. -N ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: ProBIND2 (Re: DNS: BIND vs. WinDNS)
On 12/14/05, Travis Roy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Turns out there's ProBIND2, and it's SWEET. You might mention *why*... :-) (Yes, I know I could Google for it myself, and research it, and all that. But: Travis has already done (at least a little of) that. If he posts his thoughts once, we all benefit from it. Big benefit multiplier there. Plus I find it more useful when opinions come from a known quantity, rather then some random person on the web. (Not everyone here knows Travis, of course, but they at least have his post history to go by.) (And, yes, I *am* going for a world record for most convoluted use of parenthetical remarks. (Just in case you were wondering. (I know you probably weren't.)) (Yes, I'm kidding (about the world record part).))) -- Ben "M, parentheses" Scott ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: ProBIND2 (Re: DNS: BIND vs. WinDNS)
Ben Scott wrote: On 12/14/05, Travis Roy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Turns out there's ProBIND2, and it's SWEET. You might mention *why*... :-) Well, for us (us being Colospace) it works well. We have a large number of domains, and right now we do it by hand, we edit named.conf, zone files, master and slaves, all by hand. This centralized config will save us a TON of time. Also, the ability to import our existing named.conf file, another huge timesaver. That along with being able to disable but not delete domains, add comments that are searchable (think customer names).. From the website here's some other features we liked: - Automatic generation of the ‘PTR’ records by the ‘A’ records (controlled by the checkbox); it generate this record during zone generation and has not a problem of dead PTR records (after A record was removed); - IP address allocation – allow to find unused IP addresses, shows duplicate names on the same address, and so on; - Lame delegation and MX violation check – useful for the external zones; - Log and configuration access – allows to view configuration files and logs from the web (so eliminates local logins to the remote systems and increases overall security); ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: ProBIND2 (Re: DNS: BIND vs. WinDNS)
On Wednesday 14 December 2005 06:44 pm, Travis Roy wrote: > Turns out there's ProBIND2, and it's SWEET. That's actually what I meant. I guess I don't actually have any experience with ProBIND itself, but ProBIND2 is great. -N ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: ProBIND2 (Re: DNS: BIND vs. WinDNS)
> On 12/14/05, Travis Roy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> Turns out there's ProBIND2, and it's SWEET. > > You might mention *why*... :-) A couple of reasons Travis didn't mention include: The configuration files generated by ProBIND are always checked before they're pushed. That said, if any errors show up in the process, it will revert to the last configuration and keep things running until the problem is worked out. This is only a feature I was able to reproduce by forcing a failure to ensure that it worked though, as it never generated a bad config. Also, you have a lot of deployment granularity. You can just push the new configs to all your name servers if you want and be done with it. It will capture the system logs for each server as it reloads configurations so you can see what happened and confirm thngs if you want. However, you also have the flexibility to specifically target only one or more DNS servers with new configurations as a "test" environment of sorts before those changes are made public. You can also choose to *just* generate files, *just* push files, or do both and reconfigure the server to boot (uses rndc). It automatically takes care of a lot of the assumed stuff, like PTRs in reverse DNS, NS records that list your name servers, etc. That's a great time saver and certainly helps keep things sane to manage and less of a hassle, but I find it important also that it allows you to disable them just as easily. There's an option when you're adding/editing an A record to let you decide if you want to add the reverse DNS record or not. There's an option when you're adding a target server to include it among the NS records or not. And of course, you can go into any of the zones you've added to the interface to manager and add these records by hand if you'd prefer. Finally, templating. At my last company where I implemented this, we had lots of domains to manage that were mostly the same. Tons were registered just in that period a few years ago where everyone bought every domain they could find under the sun (I guess some do still do that?) and these largely all point to the same website, use the same MXs, etc. Our primary domains obvously have a lot more details in them for particular hostnames we use, but the gist is that most are the same. There's a zone in ProBIND2 called TEMPLATE. Make whatever changes you want globally to start with in any new zone there and it will act as a template. Being based on a MySQL database doesn't hurt either as it's easy to get in and do mass adds/deletes if you want simply by looking at the DB and formulating a query or two. > (Yes, I know I could Google for it myself, and research it, and all > that. But: Travis has already done (at least a little of) that. If > he posts his thoughts once, we all benefit from it. Big benefit > multiplier there. Plus I find it more useful when opinions come from > a known quantity, rather then some random person on the web. (Not > everyone here knows Travis, of course, but they at least have his post > history to go by.) (And, yes, I *am* going for a world record for > most convoluted use of parenthetical remarks. (Just in case you were > wondering. (I know you probably weren't.)) (Yes, I'm kidding (about > the world record part).))) I'm sorry. I don't speak lisp. -N ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: ProBIND2 (Re: DNS: BIND vs. WinDNS)
Ben Scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On 12/14/05, Travis Roy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> Turns out there's ProBIND2, and it's SWEET. > > You might mention *why*... :-) > > (Yes, I know I could Google for it myself, and research it, and all > that. But: Travis has already done (at least a little of) that. If > he posts his thoughts once, we all benefit from it. Big benefit > multiplier there. Plus I find it more useful when opinions come from > a known quantity, rather then some random person on the web. (Not > everyone here knows Travis, of course, but they at least have his post > history to go by.) (And, yes, I *am* going for a world record for > most convoluted use of parenthetical remarks. (Just in case you were > wondering. (I know you probably weren't.)) (Yes, I'm kidding (about > the world record part).))) > > -- Ben "M, parentheses" Scott It almost, but not quite valid lisp syntax ;) -- Seeya, Paul ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: ProBIND2 (Re: DNS: BIND vs. WinDNS)
On Dec 14, 2005, at 8:21 PM, Travis Roy wrote: Well, for us (us being Colospace) it works well. We have a large number of domains, and right now we do it by hand, we edit named.conf, zone files, master and slaves, all by hand. This centralized config will save us a TON of time. Not to pick on you in particular, Travis, as much to make a general point: you say you have a "large" number of domains, and I'd be curious as to the order of magnitude, just to get the big picture. I find my clients are always telling me they have a large (sometimes "huge") amount of data to manage: sometimes it takes as many as a DOZEN floppies to back up; other times they are talking about 100 meg or ten million rows. It seems that large is a relative term ;) Ted Roche Ted Roche & Associates, LLC http://www.tedroche.com ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: ProBIND2 (Re: DNS: BIND vs. WinDNS)
Ben Scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On 12/14/05, Travis Roy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> Turns out there's ProBIND2, and it's SWEET. > > You might mention *why*... :-) And you might also include a URL. As Ben mentioned, sure, we could google for it, or look on freshmeat, but if you can, why not help others save time when you can. Another benefit that at least I derive from having the URL in the e-mail is the ability to instantly bookmark it to my del.icio.us account with relevant tags. I've found this to be immensely useful for all sorts of things. Not the least of which is, later when either I have time, or someone asks me about something, I can usually remember the minimal fact that I bookmarked *something* to delicious and using the related tags search, quickly find it. It's usually a lot faster than googling for things or searching e-mail archives :) -- Seeya, Paul ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: ProBIND2 (Re: DNS: BIND vs. WinDNS)
> On Dec 14, 2005, at 8:21 PM, Travis Roy wrote: > Not to pick on you in particular, Travis, as much to make a general > point: you say you have a "large" number of domains, and I'd be > curious as to the order of magnitude, just to get the big picture. For what it's worth, this is great even if you're only managing a few domains. It doesn't matter what you consider large. Including reverse lookup zones, when I implemented this, I think I managed 2 views with about 10 zones in one and about 20 in the other. That's probably small game to anyone who's asking a question like you're asking now, but realistically, it'll scale as much as you want it to. If the list of zones gets too big to have in the left column even, you can hide it specifically because the author expected someone might not want to see a full list of their zones in the left column. That's what search is for. By the way, Paul: http://probind2.sourceforge.net/ -N ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: ProBIND2 (Re: DNS: BIND vs. WinDNS)
Not to pick on you in particular, Travis, as much to make a general point: you say you have a "large" number of domains, and I'd be curious as to the order of magnitude, just to get the big picture. just under 900 zone files, including reverse zones. Managing by hand is a PITA ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
