How to manage a DNS server remotely?

Question

I whant to make a web interface on a server that will manage a few dns servers on another servers.

How can i remotely manage a bind dns server programmaticly ?

• I would like to add/edit/delete zones.
• I see that there is rndc but that only allows reloading of zones and not adding/deleting.
• I could NFS mount zones from dns servers and edit them but is there a better way?

Answer 1

You could set up something that does remote SSH commands? That may be a bit insecure, though, unless the server running the commands themselves is pre-authenticated with an SSH key, and that's the only way you can access the server.

Answer 2

If there isn't a hard requirement on writing something like this from scratch, why not simply use an already existing interface without having to reinvent the wheel? A simple Google search for the keywords bind dns web interface yields an entire list of good open source projects in the very first result link.

Answer 3

There is work at the IETF to define a standard for remote control of name servers based on the Netconf framework. See:

• http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dnsop-name-server-management-reqs
• http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-dickinson-dnsop-nameserver-control-00.txt

The requirements include the ability to add/remove zones, etc.