djbdns: An alternative to BIND

Sun Apr 10 05:30:58 UTC 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

Tellurian Networks - The Ultimate Internet Connection
http://www.tellurian.com | 888-TELLURIAN | 973-300-9211
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