editing DNS zones

L

Lem0nHead

Verified User
Joined
Nov 28, 2004
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I think it would be nice to add an "advanced DNS zone editor" on directadmin (ie, a button that changes from the default editor, with the editbox and so one, to a textarea)
there could be some validation (parsing the textarea content) before reloading named
 
Sounds great ... except ...

the validation requirement.

I've tried to do this before on other platforms. The validation gets complex.

Any ideas on what you'd want to validate?

Jeff
 
problem solved:
FreeBSD (and I believe all OS supported by DA) has named-checkzone
 
Thanks for bringing this to our attention.

Any idea what named-bootconf does?

Jeff
 
named-bootconf converts named configuration files from BIND 4 format to BIND 8 format.
 
An oldie ;) . Haven't needed that in a few years.

Thanks for the reminder; I suppose it's time to pull out my version 1 of the Bind book :).

Jeff
 
Hmm hmm... here are my thoughts...

The DirectAdmin zone parser is not nearly as "valid" as the actual named parser. Regarding zone validity with named, it's fine to be editing it as you want (named-checkzone, etc), but when it comes to having DA show you what you actually typed in the "simple" editor, your more advanced settings may not get parsed correctly by DA. Basically, DA only supports a subset of all the valid syntax a zone could have. Of course, if that ever happens, I'm not opposed to fixing DA to support these other syntaxes as we find them... (within reason).

What I would be more willing to do, is add any of the extra things you want to edit into DA as options in the standard dns editors, but I guess it would really depend on exactly why you're wanting to edit the zones manually in the first place. If you're looking for copy/paste of entire zones, then nothing would be able to replace a textarea... but if it's just to be able to edit things like the SOA, email, or things like that, I would be more willing to just add those items in to what we already have.

John
 
my main reason is to make it easier to setup a google mail account, for example, when users request like 5 MX to be setup

another thing I'd like to do, but couldn't with the DA sintax, is setting up MX for subdomains
I had to do it manually, but it didn't show correctly on DA viewer


DirectAdmin Support said:
Hmm hmm... here are my thoughts...

The DirectAdmin zone parser is not nearly as "valid" as the actual named parser. Regarding zone validity with named, it's fine to be editing it as you want (named-checkzone, etc), but when it comes to having DA show you what you actually typed in the "simple" editor, your more advanced settings may not get parsed correctly by DA. Basically, DA only supports a subset of all the valid syntax a zone could have. Of course, if that ever happens, I'm not opposed to fixing DA to support these other syntaxes as we find them... (within reason).

What I would be more willing to do, is add any of the extra things you want to edit into DA as options in the standard dns editors, but I guess it would really depend on exactly why you're wanting to edit the zones manually in the first place. If you're looking for copy/paste of entire zones, then nothing would be able to replace a textarea... but if it's just to be able to edit things like the SOA, email, or things like that, I would be more willing to just add those items in to what we already have.

John
Click to expand...
 
Are you saying you'd like to have five MX records set up for each domain? You can add up to seven MX records manually.

Or are you saying you want predefined MX records? We've done that on our servers, with our default setups, by making manual changes to the DNS templates.

Jeff
 
jlasman said:
Are you saying you'd like to have five MX records set up for each domain? You can add up to seven MX records manually.

Or are you saying you want predefined MX records? We've done that on our servers, with our default setups, by making manual changes to the DNS templates.

Jeff
Click to expand...

1) I can add the MX manually, but I have to type one, press the button, wait the page, type the next, ...
if I could edit with a textbox, it would be faster

2) for subdomains you can't add MX using DA, you need to create a new zone for this subdomain
 
Subdomains created by DirectAdmin as subdomains don't have their own email addresses, and therefore shouldn't need their own mx records. Subdomains using their own email addresses need to be created as domains in DirectAdmin; if you create them as domains, then they will have their own subdomain records.

As I wrote above you can make manual changes to DNS templates to create as many MX records as you want. We've already made the change to create two MX records, using mx0 (0) for nolisting.

Jeff
 
jlasman said:
Subdomains created by DirectAdmin as subdomains don't have their own email addresses, and therefore shouldn't need their own mx records. Subdomains using their own email addresses need to be created as domains in DirectAdmin; if you create them as domains, then they will have their own subdomain records.
Click to expand...

yes, I got it
but DNS zone sintax allows that and sometimes it would be useful
but that's fine, this probably has a reason to be that way with DA and would mess somethings if done differently



jlasman said:
As I wrote above you can make manual changes to DNS templates to create as many MX records as you want. We've already made the change to create two MX records, using mx0 (0) for nolisting.
Click to expand...

sorry, I'm not understanding
if I want to change the MX for one single domain to point to google mail, I need to add like 5 MX, let's say:
google1.com MX 10
google2.com MX 20
google3.com MX 20
google4.com MX 30
google5.com MX 30

so how can I do that for that single domain using DA? I don't get how the DNS template will help me here
 
For a single domain it won't. It would work if you were doing it for all the domains on your server. Can you figure out how to answer John so he can do what you want? Perhaps a button to add googlemail MX?

Perhaps you or someone else can write a plugin to do it.

If you do it a lot, the plugin would be worth it; if you do it only occasionally than I don't see a problem with doing it manually.

Jeff
 
jlasman said:
For a single domain it won't. It would work if you were doing it for all the domains on your server. Can you figure out how to answer John so he can do what you want? Perhaps a button to add googlemail MX?

Perhaps you or someone else can write a plugin to do it.

If you do it a lot, the plugin would be worth it; if you do it only occasionally than I don't see a problem with doing it manually.

Jeff
Click to expand...

hm, a button to add googlemail MX would be nice, but I believe it's not a very good idea for DA (people may start requesting buttons for adding many other things, and I don't see a reason to add just google, besides its probably the most used nowadays)

in fact I don't do it very often... it's like twice a week, but when I need to do, I always think "huh, it would be nice to have a textarea here" :)
but if it makes things incompatible, I guess it doesn't worth it
a plugin is an interesting idea though
I'm gonna check some plugin tutorial when I have more time (or when I get 2 requests pending in the same day :P)
 
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