automatically updating named.conf

[Kevin Darcy]

I don't think there is anything publically available. Such a utility can
tend to become rather enterprise-specific if you need to rely on local
conventions to determine a) how the slave knows to stop or start slaving a
zone in the first place, and b) for new zones, what parameters the slave
should specify for the zone, e.g. what masters to use, what
access/update/zone-transfer restrictions should be on the zone, etc.. My
in-house solution, for instance, walks the namespace looking for added or
deleted delegations, and updates the named.conf file accordingly.
Fortunately, the size of our internal namespace is not prohibitive for this
approach -- it obviously wouldn't work for Internet servers -- especially
since I employ local conventions to decide where to "prune" the search tree.
Local conventions are also employed to determine whether or not to create a
"stealth" slave, and for slaves of all types to fill in slave-zone
parameters. As such, the utility is very Chrysler-specific, not to mention
the property of DaimlerChrysler and not something I can freely distribute.

If I were to write something like this for an Internet server, I'd probably
have it trigger from the receipt of a NOTIFY from the master.

Of course, there's always the alternative of just replicating your DNS data
using something other than zone transfers, preferably using something
efficient and secure -- Dan Bernstein recommends an rsync-over-ssh solution.
One big advantage of this is that you can use the same mechanism, in a
"push" mode from the master to the slaves, to update their named.conf files
as well. One big drawback, though, is that, with such an approach, every
"slave" now thinks it's a master, which can be a nightmare if you ever plan
to implement Dynamic Update.


- Kevin

Eric S. Johansson wrote:

> If I add or delete a zone, are there any tools for automatically updating
> named.conf on the slaves?
> ---eric