hi,

this is probably going to sound absolutly nuts, stupid and crazy, so here goes:

i am trying to setup a dynamic dns server, with out linux ( i know, seems to be a crazy question to ask in a linux forum )
its going to end up on a windows box

basically the windows dns stuff is abit too clumsy for my needs, i basically i need a server that can be dynamically updated as a user dials in to a terminal server. so i thought may be a php enhanced apache server could do it.

i know how to tell apache to listen on the dns port ( 53 ) with virtual hosts, but i am clueless when it come to how dns actuall works, for example is it plain text, and how could i get apache to serve out a page without being asked?

is there a way to make apache respond to a dns request? for example is there a module to do it?

or has anyone else done this before?

any help will be Appreciated

thanks
antken

why not use the proxy server in windows

ics

I don't think I understand what it's supposed to do

I think I see what you mean, you want to write your own dns software using php?

This is not a simple thing, and since you said you do not know how dns works it seems like a long reach to think you could accomplish it.

However anything is possible.

reading your comments makes me think i did not explain the idea correctly, so i am going to try again, here goes

right, the porpose of this is to provide a fully dynamic name to ip service, basically to assist in the technical support issues, remote control, etc

flow diagram of how it should work:

1. user dials to the internet

2. if successful a program is envoked on the client that will contact the server and say ' i am here ' the server will then say ok and take the requesting ipaddress and name specified and stick it into a sql DB ( or another data storage method )

when all this is complete the people at are end can just do at their command line: ping customer123

and as usual like our favorite dns servers it returns the ipaddress of that person/customer

thats my plan any who

the reason why i think apache could do it is because of its ability to load modules and have multiple servers/hosts running and its scripting abilities with things like php and cgi

i would not like to use ics because in my experience its a lumb of brown cack, we already have one but it falls over at 3000 and odd requests.

are there any modules that would/cloud make this happen?

I got you now. It sounds good.

It's just that dns is complicated and has many vunerabilities that have mostly been overcome over the years by some of the available servers out there.

You will need a program that will execute that logs into the server and submits the info right. How about having this program submit the info, also download an updated hosts file from the server that will update the local host file on the machine.

this way you do not need to create a dns server, only a server that will store the info in a file and serve it out to everyone as they login.

I would say you also need to have the program run every few minutes to update the local hosts file.


Hope this helps!

Not trying to shoot down your idea or anything, just an alternative.

that sounds like a good idea, the only problem is extra trafic on the network and the refresh timefor the new file. i am not putting your idea down just yet, if you dont mind i'll keep a firm grip on that one.

if possible, i would like it to be an instant thing.

my only concern ( if i could use linux to do it ) would be the daemon reload times and is it first come first serve when it comes to adding in the new host, or can i use some sort of DB with bind?


on the security front, i forgot to mention the client brings up an extra level of 'security', the server ( both the dns server and the host updating ) will not be sat outside on the web like a normal dns server.
the clients connect to our network using a vpn, so the service can sit inside the network and would not be a major problem for this project.

This seems to complicate things even more.

I was thinking local lan.
I assume your clients will be on other networks besides your own. So they will have their ip addresses assigned to some other hostname by their isp.

If you provide static dns for the clients you will also need to provide dns for all internet addresses as well as the created ones. This means you will need to query the root servers for ip addresses and also filter the query with the created ones for your client names.


I guess you will be using something like fredjones.domain.com to resolve to your server domain.com?

Anyway it seems that the hosts file may actually cut down on network traffic depending on the number of clients.

dns cache is not really updated that frequently anyway.

progress report:

i have been working on this on and off through out the day and i have found an example of a dns server written in visual basic
( a windows programming language )

the basic example ( unmodified from the original code ) basically is a cache-ing dns server ( for those of you who dont know, basically the program maintains a cache of all requested ip addresses, and it it does not have it ( the ip address ) it asks another dns server )

so far i have managed to, write a bit of the code to insert a false ip into the cache, and get a windows client to read this false information properly, however the ip address in the cache is stored in a strange way.
each octet is represented by a letter, decoding the letters is not a problem, its re-encoding them that causes problems.

i have also made a database connection to a mysql database to extract name and ip address information.

so basically i am half way there, its just inserting the values of the users ip information directly from the database into the cache, and i can knock up the web page that will enter the ip address into the database in five or so minutes.

i would hope fully like to release this code ( visual basic bit ) as an example, however i need to ask the person who wrote the example first before i can put it up any where.
its also a sort of good example of building a dns packet, i may learn somthing from this yet

when this is done and working i would like to port it to linux as a small project.
( please tell me your thoughts on converting a visual basic program to linux too )