GUI for isc-dhco/dns

[Brendan Kearney]

On Mon, 2014-08-18 at 13:02 -0700, Gregory Sloop wrote:
> 
> 
> DB> On 8/18/14 12:29 PM, kevinmsmith22 at roadrunner.com wrote:
> >> I have an Ubuntu server 14.04 and am looking for a goo Web based
> GUI for that uses the existing config files, or can import them so I
> don't have to reenter everything. And (yes I know linux) is relatively
> easy to set up and maintain..
> 
> DB> Webmin is the traditional answer here, have you tried it and found
> it 
> DB> lacking?
> 
> I'll chime in here, though I may very well be wrong. The last time I
> looked at Webmin [probably a 12-18 months ago] on Ubuntu 12.04 with a
> 2.4.x version of DHCPd, Webmin seemed very ignorant about lots of
> stuff. [At least that's the way I recall it.] I don't recall any of
> the details, but it looked very ugly and likely that if I made any
> changes with Webmin, it would likely totally hose down my configs.
> 
> [I *am* using fail-over and such, but I'm not doing anything unusual
> or esoteric. But IIRC the problems seems far greater than handling
> fail-over properly.]
> 
> But, as I said above, it's been a while and I don't recall the details
> well at all.
> 
> If someone does actually try webmin, or if there's someone who can
> comment on it, and has used it successfully, I'd be grateful to hear
> about your experience. 
> There are some things, like looking at active leases which are quite
> nice to do on a GUI - and for those I'd like to use webmin. But I'm
> pretty wary. :)
> 
> TIA for any feedback!
> 
> -Greg
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> dhcp-users at lists.isc.org
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while the concern around not having to re-enter all the info is not
going to be covered by what i am running, i will offer my opinion.  i
have had continuing success with OpenLDAP as a backend for dhcpd and
named and phpldapadmin as the web frontend.

for named i am using the bind-dyndb-ldap package from the FreeIPA
project, that does zone and record management in ldap.  dynamically
loaded zones, handling of ddns updates, nearly all of the things i would
want in a dns config, it does.  you still have your named.conf to do a
lot of the config of the instance, but the records are all in ldap.
really nice.  oh, and i believe i can have a multi master dns
environment (still working through details) so i can do anycast for
queries and ddns updates.

dhpcd ships with the ability to connect to ldap and query for its
config, out of the box.  the schema uses abstracted ldap objects that
allow for the value to be specific, and not requiring the ldap object to
be specific.  it allows for dhcpd config directives to change over time
without having to redesign the schema or introduce new OIDs.  using the
dynamic mode, newly defined host objects (for reservations, i think) can
be added and picked up by the dhcpd instance without having to
stop/start.

along with dhcpd and named leveraging ldap as their database, i have
kerberos doing that too.  then sasl "glues" ldap and kerberos together,
so i can have an identity established by kerberos mapped to a ldap
object.  this setup takes phpldapadmin to awesome.  not only can i
configure the cn=config database, but the DIT data as well.  hosting
dhcpd and named data in ldap and managing it with phpldapadmin is a
snap.  i leverage sasl in the phpldapadmin configs, so AuthN and AuthZ
grant me my access to what i am authorized to access.  the graphical
representation of my zones or subnets and pools really helps me
understand the environment better and helps with decisions.

while i do not have "production" status yet, i do have very easily
managed dhcpd and named instances using a browser.  again, you would
need to re-enter a lot of data to convert to something like this, but
some bash skills will go a long way to reduce that effort.  i find this
to be a great means to manage my environment.

best of luck,

brendan