Re: Web/GUI DNS Config?

[Chuck Yerkes <chuck+obsd_(_at_)_2004_(_dot_)_snew_(_dot_)_com>]

Quoting Jason Dixon (jason_(_at_)_dixongroup_(_dot_)_net):
> On Apr 22, 2004, at 4:51 PM, Alex Kirk wrote:
> 
> >This is probably a silly question, so feel free to flame if 
> >appropraite...
> >
> >Are there any good web-based/GUI tools for administering BIND on 
> >OpenBSD? I know
> >Webmin is out there, but I've heard a lot of bad things as far as its 
> >security
> >record, and it'd be a shame to mess up the security of such a great OS 
> >with such
> >a trivial program.
>
> My suggestions are a) don't run DNS unless you have to, and b) if you 
> must, learn from the command line.  There are a number of good free DNS 
> services (http://www.everydns.net comes to mind), so there's really no 
> need to run Bind locally unless you're trying to learn how to 
> administer it.  And if that's the case, you wouldn't want a GUI 
> anyways.
> 
> P.S.  From my experience, there aren't any good (free) DNS front-ends.  
> One of the companies I work with actually wrote two applications for 
> managing DNS (different departments, different networks).  The only 
> nice thing I can say about them is they use a database back-end, making 
> for easy searches and allowing you to import large numbers of records 
> at once.  Of course, a little shell scripting and Bind 9 makes this 
> point moot.

While I mainly concur (the person running DNS should be aware
of it's details). But it would be nice to allow a non-root or
non-unix person to be able to manage a zone 
1) remotely
2) via a GUI.

I host domains for several people and jump through hoops to
not give them root but let them manage basic DNS records.

The strength of a GUI, and the best reason to not learn DNS by
a GUI, is that a GUI restrains you and limits what you can do.

This might appear beneficial (things work because it keeps
you from making mistakes) but it doesn't make you a DNS admin.
And it doesn't help you when you have a problem - you still
have no troubleshooting skills nor a notion of how things
SHOULD be.

Kinda like windows (ever try to debug a registry or jet database?)


All that said, http://sauron.jyu.fi/  was recommened to me to
check out.  I haven't yet, but here it is.

Oh yeah, and BIND allows for SQL backends and there are RFCs
to store DNS info in LDAP - "generifying" the backend was one of
the goals of BIND9 - but then you need a GUI to manage whatever
data store you have.

Now, back to on-topic bsd things.