[TriLUG] wierd bind9 question

[Aaron S. Joyner]

Jason Tower wrote:

> none of this involves dhcp, this is strictly a dns server.  i was
> hoping to use manual entries as needed and fill in the gaps with a
> generate statement but since it appears there is no way to run that
> way without creating duplicate PTR records i guess i'm sol.  maybe
> ldap is the way to go on this, i'll have to see how "lively" i feel
> and whether or not that will make things significantly easier.  thanks
> aaron!

Note: Let me state for the record that I did not advocate putting your
DNS zone files into LDAP.  Yes, you can do this.  Yes, it will work. 
No, I do not think it is a good idea.  :)  From the sounds of it, a big
list is your best bet.  At ISPs where I've worked in the past, that was
always the modus-operandi.

Another way to ease the administrative burden of managing reverse DNS
like that is to let BIND do it for you, and script up a little interface
to it.  With only a modicum of CGI work, you can create a PERL / PHP /
BASH / <your language of choice> front end to dnsupdate which will
remove the PTR record, and replace it with one of your choice. 
Although, at this point, you might as well skip over to using something
like webmin to manage that zone file, the only advantage being that if
you write it yourself, you're sure to understand how and why it works,
which is often the primary problem with programs like webmin to
administer complicated systems.  They tend to attempt to remove the
complexity from an actually complicated system, which often just
compounds the problem.  You think you really understand how it works,
but if you do something the developers of your configuration management
system didn't expect... well, "the results are undefined".  :)

Okay, I got a bit far afield from Jason's question, but hopefully it's
of use to someone.

Aaron S. Joyner