Re: [OT] Dns servers

["Tony Earnshaw" <tonye@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Craig Sanders:

[...]

> if you want to serve domain(s) (either primary or secondary), then bind
> is still your best choice(*).  the so-called "bloat" is there for a
> reason, to meet the requirements of the standards.  bind can host domains
> and it can do recursive lookups (i.e. act as a resolver for your local
> network).  it is relatively easy to set up and will basically Just Work,
> and cause you little or no grief.

[...]

I'd agree and add, for my own account, that:

- BIND is a lingua franca - it's what's included with most (+n+x) systems
as standard; learn it once, copy your config files from system to system
and augment them as you need to. It's utilities are what are used as
standard. The doco for 9.2.x is really good, with enough examples and
such. Because the doco for earlier versions was such a PITA, there was a
real need for "ask Mr. DNS" and suchlike fora, but there really isn't any
longer.

There are alternatives, for example, to "the bloat of Apache", "the bloat
of Openldap", and others, but once you've learned to use them properly,
you'll miss their features when they aren't there. I suppose the ultimate
example of this is MS Windows.

Oh, and the alternative to "the bloat of Sendmail" seems to be Postfix, on
most +n+x systems now days.

[...]

> (*) i've wished this weren't true many times over the years.  now i'm
> just resigned to the fact that any alternative to bind will have its own
> annoyances that are far worse than bind's annoyances.  all DNS software
> sucks in one way or another.  bind sucks the least, or at least
> compensates for it's suckiness with good features, reasonable but not
> perfect reliability, and decent configuration and zonefile formats.

Only I never looked for any alternatives to BIND, just knuckled down and
learned it from 4.7 onward, used "ask Mr. DNS", newsgroups, and so on, but
that's really not necessary any longer.

--Tonni

--
mail: tonye@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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