DNS Strategy

T

tony1234

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Jul 25, 2005
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I have one dedicated server, with DA. I have 5 ips. I have NS1 and NS2 on 2 of the IPs for my domain, not the main ip of the server, and set it up through DA since it appeared I should by its instructions and by some forum message by my provider of the server.

My question is, is that smart? What if my server goes down? I guess if my site is down, who cares if my DNS is down too, seems to kind of makes sense in a convoluted type of way.

For people like me with my own stuff only, what do people do? Is this common?
(I may have a second backup site one of these days - then what?)
 
Lots of people run the two required nameservers (required for domain registration) on the same server.

That's a shortcut.

Which completely ignores the original reason for needing two nameservers... so DNS stays up even if one of the nameservers goes down.

So we suggest, and we ourselves implement, multiple nameservers.

We've written Master2Slave (look for it in the forums; it's now in beta) to automate creation of slave zones on non-local nameservers. DA has created a similar feature, which will be built into the next release of DA.

If you only have one physical nameserver, and your server goes down, anyone sending email to your domains will get it returned with a note that the domain doesn't exist. And anyone looking for the site will get a browser error that the site doesn't exist.

If you have multiple physical nameservers, then the email systems will generally hold email until your server is back up, and visitors to your site will see an error that the server can't be reached, with is must better than an error that says the site doesn't exist.

We think our customers deserve multiple nameservers.

Of course, because we're in the DNS and virtual slave nameserver business, we're prejudiced :) .

But our master2slave package is free.

Jeff
 
Im looking for Master2Slave but the link to download it returns a 404 page not found. Anyone have a copy of it?
 
I finally did that. So i installed everything on the master and slave. Unfortunately there are issues with the getzone.dns.sh script. It does not grep named.conf properly so the end result when running the test is a blank ip.named.conf.

# Created by master2slave

Nothing else in the file.

I tested the grep statements on a command line and they dont work properly. So i substitued the variable for the realy paths and they still dont work properly.

This line, grep "^zone" $namedconf|grep -v '^#'|grep -v "/namedftp/"|grep "type master" >> /home/namedftp/named.master.conf

Yields no results. In fact, if you run it from the command line by substituing the varialbes for the real files and paths it just sits there and hangs. The other grep lines are the same.

The snag in the above line is, |grep -v "/namedftp/"|grep "type master". What is /namedftp/ anyway? If its greping my named.conf there is no such entry in named.conf.

This is pretty much my snap otherwise i think i have it running on the slave but its hard to tell since i cannot get the Master to populate the ip.named.conf file.

I thought this was written with Unix in mind? Not sure what others have done to get this script running.


Also, the last line needed fixing.
 
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pucky,

if you have a look at the directions, the first thing it tells you to create a user: (follow those instructions)

In step 2, you extract the program and copy part of it into that users home directory.

Then in step 3 you have to create a folder called namedftp in the <webroot> of your server and chown it.

There are 7 steps to get the "Master" setup. Then you have to setup your slave.

** If you have not done this, you will have problems ** Go back and read the instructions for the install. It is fairly straight forward and does work when properly setup.

I run this on multiple CentOS 4.x servers with no problems.
 
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rocketcity said:
pucky,

if you have a look at the directions, the first thing it tells you to create a user: (follow those instructions)

In step 2, you extract the program and copy part of it into that users home directory.

Then in step 3 you have to create a folder called namedftp in the <webroot> of your server and chown it.

There are 7 steps to get the "Master" setup. Then you have to setup your slave.

** If you have not done this, you will have problems ** Go back and read the instructions for the install. It is fairly straight forward and does work when properly setup.

I run this on multiple CentOS 4.x servers with no problems.
Click to expand...

I'v done all that. The user was created look

namedftp:!!:13408:0:99999:7:::

The instructions were followed to a tee. Spent pretty much the whole day on it.

When i run su - namedftp -c './getzone.dns.sh' the result is a file that only contain;

cat named*
# Created by master2slave

a comment line. Nothing else in the file. I just cant see why it not populating the file. Im running RHEL3 on this server which will be the slave. Maybe its my /etc/named.conf :mad:
 
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I just cant get this to read my named.conf. Looking at it for way too many hours now.
 
Can sombody show me what named.master.conf is supposed to contain please.
 
It will contain entries like this
Code: 
zone "comcomnetcom.com" { type master; file "/var/named/comcomnetcom.com.db"; };

Question,
a comment line. Nothing else in the file. I just cant see why it not populating the file. Im running RHEL3 on this server which will be the slave. Maybe its my /etc/named.conf
Click to expand...
Did you setup the master part of this program on your "slave dns" server?
 
rocketcity said:
It will contain entries like this
Code: 
zone "comcomnetcom.com" { type master; file "/var/named/comcomnetcom.com.db"; };

Question,
Did you setup the master part of this program on your "slave dns" server?
Click to expand...

I dont think that matters. The script should be able to read either the master or slave servers named.conf.

I dont want to use DA as the master becuase i have 6 Cpanel boxes that replicate to each other. The 6th is the master since all the others zone files are sent to the 6th therefore i should be able to take the zone files from the 6th box and move them to the DA server which is the slave. The script doesnt care which is the master and which is the slave as long as they can transfer the files the zone files between themselves.
 
The way this script is written, the master portion of this script has to be able to read the contents sitting in named on whatever server you call the master "DNS Server". The master portion of this script reads from that file generates the file places it into the folder namedftp. That file is then pulled to the "Slave" server and a second script run against it and it proprogates the slave server.

If the master portion of this file is looking at an empty named structure, you will get an empty named.master.conf in return.

I do not know if it is possible to make this work any other way. Perhaps if Jeff (the guy that wrote the program) sees this thread, he can comment on that.

I know in our setup, we only run DA servers. We use this script to create a seperate DNS server (not running DA or any other type of Control Panel) so that we have our fail over DNS server.
 
rocketcity said:
The way this script is written, the master portion of this script has to be able to read the contents sitting in named on whatever server you call the master "DNS Server". The master portion of this script reads from that file generates the file places it into the folder namedftp. That file is then pulled to the "Slave" server and a second script run against it and it proprogates the slave server.

If the master portion of this file is looking at an empty named structure, you will get an empty named.master.conf in return.

I do not know if it is possible to make this work any other way. Perhaps if Jeff (the guy that wrote the program) sees this thread, he can comment on that.

I know in our setup, we only run DA servers. We use this script to create a seperate DNS server (not running DA or any other type of Control Panel) so that we have our fail over DNS server.
Click to expand...

Since the Master is Cpanel box 6 there are over 400 zone files in /etc/named.conf and that is the zone file that it produces the file from. This is the named.conf that returns zero entries.
 
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