Master <--> slave named.conf "auto-generation"

[John Wobus]

On Mar 13, 2008, at 4:40 AM, bsd wrote:
> I would like to know if there is a way, whenever a new zone definition
> is added to the primary master server, to have the slaves
> automatically configure themselves with matching slave-zone 
> definitions?
>
> If not - what are people currently using to acomplish this task?
>
> Have you got any good script that could help me achieve that in an
> "elegant" way?
>
> What are the best path to achieve this knowing that I could have
> master and slave file generated on one server (the master), how would
> you handle the propagation of the named.conf (slave) file and signal
> (rndc reload) and the slave?
>
> Any other advise / experience / experiment are welcome.

My experience does not include dynamic DNS, but...

Sites with large DNS setups often generate their zone files and
the relevant portions of the named.conf files from a database.  The
app that does this generation transfers the zones and relevant 
named.conf
to the master and transfers the slave-oriented named.conf to the slaves,
e.g. using rsync, and does the appropriate rndc commands.  My site does 
this.

If you want to maintain DNS as flat files on one nameserver, a way to 
do it is
to make the 'slaves' into masters, and transfer an included piece of the
named.conf file as well as all the zone files to them using rsync.  
Then you can
do all your work on the flat files on one nameserver (the 'primary 
master'?), and run a script
that does nothing more than transfers files and runs a remote rndc 
command.  And notify
and zone transfer issues never bite you.  I've never been at a site that
does exactly this, but I have been at a site that managed three 
identical masters
from the same database rather than using slaves.

John Wobus