Re: [cobalt-developers] DNS Set-up

["Jens Kristian Søgaard" <jens@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Jason,

> But I want to several slaves (secondary servers) to automatically update the
> domains withour having staff to create the master record and all the
> secondary records on all the slaves. I know this can done, as I see this
> before under BIND 4 some years ago but can remember how this is done.

It's actually quite easy. We normally do it this way:

1. Create a small Perl-script that reads through named.conf to find all zones for which the server is master. It then outputs a named.conf for the secondary, that just sets it up with type=slave and the ip-address of the primary.

2. Use SSH and setup a "trust" between the master and slave. This means that you can from the named user on the master login to the named user on the slave without entering a password (it uses RSA authentication instead).

3. Setup a crontab to let rsync transfer the named.conf that were generated in step 1 to the slave. Use -e ssh on rsync to let it be performed securely. Then use SSH to initate a server reload on the slave (to let new zones go into production)
 
By the way: How many zones are you DNS-hosting? (we are currently looking for a beta-tester or two for our new DNS management system. It's a Bind-spinoff that runs fully from a SQL database and therefore allows for easier replication and updates. If you're doing DNS for a large amount of domains (1500+), we'll be very interested in speaking with you.)

-- 
Jens Kristian Søgaard, Mermaid Consulting I/S,
jens@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,
http://www.mermaidconsulting.com/