Folks:

Please advise me on the following:

I have been colocating for years but am now in a position to move away from this provider. I am running four servers for e-mail and websites. I will have two dedicated name servers. I already have the two DNS Ip's and domains setup with my company network provider.

So now I am installing Linux on two boxes to serve as Primary and Secondary DNS. I am only using these as DNS. I have books, and have read everything I can find, but nothing suggests the minimum packages or options to install to run/manage the DNS.

After choosing the Server setup option, should I select a GUI along with the DNS option, or just the DNS option. I understand the process of editing the appropriate files and all, and I am comfortable with editing these with a text editor, but is there a reliable and nice GUI application that I can use to add or delete domain entries every time I pick up a new hosting client or need to make a change to an existing client?

I am asking because I don't want to install any unnecessary applications or processes, but if there is an efficient and effective interface to manage domains on my DNS besides the text editing method, I want to take advantage of it because I have over 100 domains to add. The thought of having a nice GUI for managing the domains is pleasant to my ears, but is not vital to my IT happiness.

Thanks in advance for any recommendations on this. Time is somewhat critical.

I don't know any GUI editor for DNS entries. You can consider using Webmin (it doesn't require you to install GUI on the server). But I'm not sure if it can be much faster than a situation when you have a 'generic' file and only paste the right values to it.

Webmin needs to have the exact 'module' installed for your version of BIND, otherwise things can break. Other than that, I would ditch the GUI, and just install the bare DNS packages for BIND & BIND-Utils. Also, if you have these domains configured on existing systems already, save yourself some headaches and GRAB THOSE ZONE FILES! They should be rfc-wxyz-compliant, and therefore portable from the existing system to your new Linux home running BIND.

These domains are on DNS boxes that are not mine. Since I am leaving this company and no longer paying the $1,000 or so a month, they are not real pleased so you know they won't copy the files for me.

I know there is a way grab all of the DNS data for each domain, 1 at a time, from his his server but I can't figure it out.

What type of system is it? You might check in /var/named, /usr/var/named, /usr/local/var/named, /etc/named, etc. I'm not sure if this is going to work for you, depending on the security that you have on their systems.

You might also be able to setup a zone transfer, but if there is any security at all on thier servers, they are preventing this.

I'd like to see you NOT have to reinvent the wheel... I'd cry if I had to setup that many domains.