bdavide

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Hello everyone,
I`ve just installed Bind9 on my Ubuntu Linux. Is there any graphical interface I can use to configure it? It is very difficult for me to use it with the command line.
I was thinking something like DNS server 2003.
Thanks

salasi

AFAIK there is no GUI for configuring bind. It is somewhat difficult to configure, but then it is very flexible and configurable, and there is a price for that.

The argument for this approach is that this is a deep system/architecture type of thing, so you have to know what you are doing to use it, and once you have understood all of the background (google "bind tutorial" or buy a book such as "DNS and Bind" or the "Bind Cookbook", or see what you library has available) it won't be very difficult at all.

OTOH, the last time I installed Bind on an Ubuntu system, the Ubuntu installer did a pretty good job of setting up the defaults so that not much needed doing.

However, there is an alternative; you could use an alternative program which is simpler to configure than Bind. If you try the page "Comparison of DNS server software" on Wikipedia, you will find that there are alternatives, usually less flexible, but easier to configure (DJBDNS, Dnsmasq and Maradns stand out as possibilities - if I remember correctly Dnsmasq and maybe Maradns will also act as a DHCP server, if that's of use to you).

bathory

Some distros like Redhat or Suse have their own gui tools to manage bind. I don't know if Ubuntu has something like that, but you can use web based tools like webmin or webbind

Regards

bdavide

What can you tell me about "PRO DNS and BIND - Apress" ? Thats the only book I found so far.
Is that more difficult because is PRO? I know a just a little about DNS and I need something that explains all, from the beginning....
Thanks

salasi

Sorry to be unhelpful, but, technically, nothing. I've seen some Apress books, and while the ones that I have seen are certainly decent, I can't comment on this particular book.

If you google on 'bind tutorial' you get, eg,
www.xenocafe.com/tutorials/dns_linux/ redhat/dns_linux_redhat-part1.php
www.freeos.com/articles/3956/
www.yolinux.com/TUTORIALS/ LinuxTutorialWebSiteConfig.html

(and stuff on bookbinding and quilt making, which I'm guessing is of less interest). Again this is a guess, but something like the last of those should do a decent job of explaining the basics. If not, you can try another search string (like 'nameserver linx tutorial', etc).

If these really aren't helping you, you should consider one of two courses of action: use something simpler than Bind or explain the problem that you are actually trying to cure (which would entail explaining something about your networking setup and what you are hoping that bind will do for you).

bdavide

Thanks for the info.
BTW I finally found the book "DNS and BIND 5th edition".