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Re: djbdns: An alternative to BIND

  • From: Robert Boyle
  • Date: Sun Apr 10 01:34:48 2005 
At 07:32 PM 4/9/2005, you wrote:

David Conrad wrote:

- Amount of code
Again, what should be counted? Should you include rsync? Should you include utility programs like check-namedconf, axfr-get, rbldns, walldns, walldns-conf, etc.?
You need only count the lines of code needed by the daemon/s
servicing requests.  That is, IMO, bind's only major failing.  Too
much code, too many little used features (nobody I know needs or
wants rndc), and no way to compile without them.  If you read Bruce
Schneier, as every developer should, you know how important that
"Amount of code" is.
How do you add zones to your servers? We certainly don't connect to a shell on all of them for simple configuration tasks. Network shares and rndc make short work of most DNS tasks.

rndc -s ns1 reconfig

and

rndc -s ns1 reload zone.com

are the two most frequently used DNS tools used by our support staff. For automated tasks, writing a zone file to disk from the database on change and issuing an rndc reload is very useful.

On the djb vs. BIND debate, for database driven zones, just output BIND format files (or djb if that floats your boat) from your database. Calling the actual zone files the "database" doesn't make sense anyway. If you manage your information well, the file format of the server application doesn't really matter. The security, performance and standards compliance matter most - to us anyway.

-Robert


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