[olug] setting up a mirror (slave?) DNS server?

[Jay Hannah]

On Sep 20, 2006, at 4:50 PM, Ryan Stille wrote:
>>> Not sure how well this will work, because I'm sure the new server  
>>> will be
>>> running a more recent version of BIND.  A > better way may be to  
>>> have a perl script
>>> scan through the named.conf file on the primary and generate a  
>>> proper named.conf
>>> file to FTP to the new > server.
>>
>> Right. And have that generated named.conf have proper zone {}  
>> blocks for a
>> secondary server. Then let BIND take care of the rest.
>>
> What will happen when the primary is down, so we alias its IP on this
> new server?  In that case the 'master' server for each zone will be
> itself.  Might this cause problems?

-sniff, sniff-  Did someone mention Perl?

At work we have 1 master BIND, a slave BIND sitting next to it, and a  
slave BIND in a remote location. Each server has its own static IP.

Every client on our network is configured to resolve DNS from all 3  
servers.

So if 1 or even 2 of the 3 servers fail, clients experience no  
service interruption while we kick/rebuild servers. Adding/changing/ 
deleting hosts is as easy as updating the zone files on the master  
and HUP'ing "named". BIND updates the slaves automagically in real time.

We don't add zones often, so that's the end of our story. Pretty  
simple. Since you want to add zones on the fly, however, I believe  
Sean is right -- you'll need some kind of named.conf creation program  
(*cough*Perl*cough*), a named.conf rsync push, and "named" restarter  
so that the slaves learn that they are to slave the new zones. No too  
hard, me thinks.

j
Omaha Perl Mongers: http://omaha.pm.org