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DNS Zone Generators

News See also Recommended Links Perl-based DNS Tools Perl-based DNS Tools DNS Audit Scripts
DNSTool Generation of zones from /etc/hosts file Reverse Zone generation  Random Findings  Humor Etc

No normal person will ever generate reverse zone manually. But forward zones are also not that great as bind syntax is pretty obscure and unless you use sophisticated features is an overkill.

NEWS CONTENTS

Old News ;-)

[Oct 28, 2011] CyberDNS

Written in Python
freshmeat.net

CyberDNS is a Web application to manage DNS zones and BIND configurations easily. It lets you add entries and then watch as they are generated into zone and configuration files. It supports IPv6 and most DNS types. The Web interface runs on the master DNS server, and cron is used to synchronize the Sqlitedb and zone files to slave DNS servers. It is easy to make snapshots to revert in the event of failure.

[Oct 28, 2011] Name Server Configurator

Oct 22, 2011 | freshmeat.net

NSC is a set of utilities for easy administration of DNS servers. You write very simple configuration files and NSC automatically generates zone files, reverse zone files, and configuration for the BIND. Among other things, it also supports classless reverse delegations and IPv6 addressing. NSC is written in POSIX shell and GNU M4, and it should run on all systems where these two languages are available. Generation of DNS daemon config files is currently limited to BIND 8 or 9, but it's very easy to add your own config file generators for other daemons.

[Feb 7, 2007] Everything Sysadmin / hostdb

Hostdb
A system for generating internal DNS zones, external DNS zones, and DHCP configuration data from the same hostlist.txt file. Keep your configurations consistant by generating them all from the same source. The files that are generated are beautifully formated and easy to "diff" before they are put into production. It even generates the Makefile required to make the system all work together. A "file push" mechanism (mkdestinations), plus many DNS-related utilities are included (sortbyip, genrange, comparezones, checkrootcache).

First unveiled at the Usenix LISA 2005 Conference, San Diego, December 4-9, 2005 under the title, "HostDB: The Best Damn host2DNS/DHCP Script Ever Written".

Released under the GPL on January 8, 2005. Current release: 1.002

Update:

Recommended Links

Google matched content

Softpanorama Recommended

Top articles

Sites

A Survey of DNS Tools An old slides by Cricket Liu

[PDF] 46 DNS

DNSTool

DNStool 2.2 administration guide

The Domain Name Service (DNS) auto-configuration system (DNStool) is designed to take the pain out of managing DNS. It does this by automatically generating DNS files from a small number of configuration files. DNS files are in a complex and repetitious format; mistakes or omissions often creep in when manually maintained. In general, it reduces the task of maintaining DNS to 3 steps:

  1. for each domain, maintain a database describing its hosts
  2. maintain a description of the common features across domains
  3. run the configuration programs to generate DNS configuration files and install them.

This document is aimed at DNS administrators and is a description of these three steps in modifying the configuration. The DNS autoconfiguration system does not remove the need to understand the basics of DNS (and the DNS auto-configurer) in order to make major changes to the DNS configuration

Download the tool

Generation of zones from /etc/hosts file

h2n, a tool for converting a static hosts file into DNS zone files. Originally written by Cricket Liu for the O'Reilly DNS and BIND book. Currently maintained by Hal Pomeranz.

h2n - a host table to name server file converter. You can use h2n to create your data the first time and then maintain your DNS data manually. Or, you can use h2n over and over again. As you have seen, the format of the host table is much simpler to understand and to modify correctly. So, you could maintain /etc/hosts and rerun h2n to update your DNS data after each modification.

If you plan to use h2n, you might as well start with it, since it uses /etc/hosts - not your hand-crafted DNS data - to generate the new DNS files. We could have saved ourselves lots of work by generating the sample data in this chapter with the following:

h2n -v 8 -d movie.edu -s terminator -s robocop -n 192.249.249 -n 192.253.253 -u al.robocop.movie.edu

The -d and -n options specify the domain name and network numbers. You'll notice that the db filenames are derived from these options. The -s options list the name servers for the NS records. The -u (user) is the email address in the SOA record.

Reverse Zones Generation

mkrdns -- Program to automatically generate reverse DNS zone files (PTR records) Dec 03rd 1998, 10:34 stable: 1.4 - devel: none license: GPL

mkdnstab DNS Table generator in Perl Jul 10th 1999, 00:28 stable: 0.3 - devel: none license: OpenSource

Updatehosts ftp://ftp.tic.com/pub/updatehosts/updatehosts-1.0.0.tar.gz -- is a system for automatically managing and generating DNS zone files using flat relational tables. Some of the features of updatehosts includes:

Random Findings

dnsupdate -- does not make any sense other then exercise in C

In search for a program that would help me create and maintain the DNS databases, my efforts were in vain. The nearest ones I could find were written in perl. The last thing I wanted to do from my program was to do a "system" call. I started playing with BIND 8.2.2 P7 and converted the nsupdate program to a function. That actually made me write the rest of the program.

My benchmark program was the famous h2n perl script. dnsupdate seems to be much faster than h2n. I have given a timing comparison table between dnsupdate and h2n in Appendix B.

With my highly limited knowledge about DNS or its configuration files (DNS tables or DNS databases) I am requesting users of this program to pinpoint any errors or suggestions to make dnsupdate a better one.


Etc

Society

Groupthink : Two Party System as Polyarchy : Corruption of Regulators : Bureaucracies : Understanding Micromanagers and Control Freaks : Toxic Managers :   Harvard Mafia : Diplomatic Communication : Surviving a Bad Performance Review : Insufficient Retirement Funds as Immanent Problem of Neoliberal Regime : PseudoScience : Who Rules America : Neoliberalism  : The Iron Law of Oligarchy : Libertarian Philosophy

Quotes

War and Peace : Skeptical Finance : John Kenneth Galbraith :Talleyrand : Oscar Wilde : Otto Von Bismarck : Keynes : George Carlin : Skeptics : Propaganda  : SE quotes : Language Design and Programming Quotes : Random IT-related quotesSomerset Maugham : Marcus Aurelius : Kurt Vonnegut : Eric Hoffer : Winston Churchill : Napoleon Bonaparte : Ambrose BierceBernard Shaw : Mark Twain Quotes

Bulletin:

Vol 25, No.12 (December, 2013) Rational Fools vs. Efficient Crooks The efficient markets hypothesis : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2013 : Unemployment Bulletin, 2010 :  Vol 23, No.10 (October, 2011) An observation about corporate security departments : Slightly Skeptical Euromaydan Chronicles, June 2014 : Greenspan legacy bulletin, 2008 : Vol 25, No.10 (October, 2013) Cryptolocker Trojan (Win32/Crilock.A) : Vol 25, No.08 (August, 2013) Cloud providers as intelligence collection hubs : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : Inequality Bulletin, 2009 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Copyleft Problems Bulletin, 2004 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Energy Bulletin, 2010 : Malware Protection Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 26, No.1 (January, 2013) Object-Oriented Cult : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2011 : Vol 23, No.11 (November, 2011) Softpanorama classification of sysadmin horror stories : Vol 25, No.05 (May, 2013) Corporate bullshit as a communication method  : Vol 25, No.06 (June, 2013) A Note on the Relationship of Brooks Law and Conway Law

History:

Fifty glorious years (1950-2000): the triumph of the US computer engineering : Donald Knuth : TAoCP and its Influence of Computer Science : Richard Stallman : Linus Torvalds  : Larry Wall  : John K. Ousterhout : CTSS : Multix OS Unix History : Unix shell history : VI editor : History of pipes concept : Solaris : MS DOSProgramming Languages History : PL/1 : Simula 67 : C : History of GCC developmentScripting Languages : Perl history   : OS History : Mail : DNS : SSH : CPU Instruction Sets : SPARC systems 1987-2006 : Norton Commander : Norton Utilities : Norton Ghost : Frontpage history : Malware Defense History : GNU Screen : OSS early history

Classic books:

The Peter Principle : Parkinson Law : 1984 : The Mythical Man-MonthHow to Solve It by George Polya : The Art of Computer Programming : The Elements of Programming Style : The Unix Hater’s Handbook : The Jargon file : The True Believer : Programming Pearls : The Good Soldier Svejk : The Power Elite

Most popular humor pages:

Manifest of the Softpanorama IT Slacker Society : Ten Commandments of the IT Slackers Society : Computer Humor Collection : BSD Logo Story : The Cuckoo's Egg : IT Slang : C++ Humor : ARE YOU A BBS ADDICT? : The Perl Purity Test : Object oriented programmers of all nations : Financial Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : The Most Comprehensive Collection of Editor-related Humor : Programming Language Humor : Goldman Sachs related humor : Greenspan humor : C Humor : Scripting Humor : Real Programmers Humor : Web Humor : GPL-related Humor : OFM Humor : Politically Incorrect Humor : IDS Humor : "Linux Sucks" Humor : Russian Musical Humor : Best Russian Programmer Humor : Microsoft plans to buy Catholic Church : Richard Stallman Related Humor : Admin Humor : Perl-related Humor : Linus Torvalds Related humor : PseudoScience Related Humor : Networking Humor : Shell Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2012 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2013 : Java Humor : Software Engineering Humor : Sun Solaris Related Humor : Education Humor : IBM Humor : Assembler-related Humor : VIM Humor : Computer Viruses Humor : Bright tomorrow is rescheduled to a day after tomorrow : Classic Computer Humor

The Last but not Least Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt. Ph.D


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