Hi,

I'm definetely new to Linux. My project is to set up a RedHat 9 DNS server. I want this server to be set up perfectly i.e. no GUI to eat up system resources, running only the necessary services and making sure that security is handled properly.

I would like your suggestions on following areas:

1. Areas that I need to be careful about
2. Do I setup ipchains or iptables for security?
3. I want to make sure that I can add/modify/delete DNS records using scripts. I definitely need some pointers here. I assume this will be Perl based. Are there any scripts available for me to use? What do I need to install so I can run these scripts?

I really appreciate your help on this project. I'm not in a hurry. If I have a purpose, I learn easier and better. So I figured this is how I will learn Linux and will have a well setup DNS server at the end which I need anyway.

IPTABLES is what is built into the kernel. It is very close to ipchains except it is 3 tables, filter, nat and mangle. iptables is the way to go. As for dns, the setup for that is simply text files. An editor is all you need. If you are looking into scripting enties, then simple shell scripts work, or awk, or sed, or perl. Your choice. What are you trying to script? host entries?

Hi,

Thanks for your response. I want to script everything in DNS i.e create new DNS files for new domains, modify existing domains records as necessary, etc.

We do a lot of hosting and use Linux based DNS servers. I'll be in charge of DNS servers soon and I want to get good at making sure that I can manage the DNS servers programmatically as opposed to manually.

Managing them manually is easy and boring but not consistent. Managing them using scripts really takes an admin to a new level. It really brings consistency and significant scalability to administration.

@imsam

Have u read this http://www.ibiblio.org/mdw/HOWTO/DNS-HOWTO.html

Read it first ! It will help u !


-jack