bind fun

[Daryl Tester]

Shane wrote:

> I'm quite surprised how little discussion I've been able to find
> online of anyone trying to do similarly - it seems like a fairly
> common thing - 

I must admit I hadn't been taking much interest because you keep
using that four letter word (I prefer tinydns myself :-), but what
I've done in these situations is write a script that takes a master
file, generates the necessary configuration files, transfers the
config files to where they need to be and then (in the case of
bind) runs ndc to reload the data files.  The "master file" just
contains enough detail to indicate which "name server" class it
needs to reside on (internal or external), record name, type and
data, and can reside in SQL or EBCDIC encrypted files or whatever
fancy your heart desires.

The key points are keep the data in one spot (the one canonical
reference), and use script/s to automate the work.  And for
$DIETY's sake, do error checking - nothing worse than having
the above fail silently on you (e.g. additionally a bit of
Python/Perl to iterate through the list and ensure those
entries exist on all the appropriate name servers).

> ...annoying how simple ideas like this often turn into really
> frustrating problems :-)

I thought it was the first rule of sysadmin-ing, XP and pragmatic
programmers - automate.


-- 
Regards,
  Daryl Tester

"Bad kitty.  Stop plotting evil."
  -- http://www.pvponline.com/article/3328/sun-may-20