QDNS and Other OS''s ---Long and Exciting

Re: QDNS and Other OS''s ---Long and Exciting

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Men & Mice Support said:

>At 12:32 PM -0500 8/8/00, Mia's Virtual Post Office wrote:
>>Will there be a QDNS version for LinuxPPC, or OSX?
>
>We'll be ready for Mac OS X when it comes out in release form. I
>can't comment at this time on our plans for Linux, Windows, or other
>mainstream server operating systems.

Ok, so here is why I ask. We have been working on a series of web based
forms that allow our customers to create their own zone files via the
net. They can create Wildcard zones, inverse, or complete custom zones
with what ever MX, A record, CNAME, etc., that they want.

We started doing this with Flexmail, but moved to PHP on Linux since it
was simpler, and (we hope) will allow us to do some awesome things, aside
from just automating most DNS entries here.

What the Flexmail pages, as well as the PHP pages now do is to append the
appropriate form field info into a text output that the QDNS domain
complier is happy with (basically the zone files are the same format as
BIND). The PHP form sends an email conformation to the client who
requested the zone, confirming their entries, and it sends this same
confirmation to the DNS-Admin. So we both have a confirmation, and all
the necessaries to create the zone. But this is just for confirmation
purposes. The PHP also creates the zone file automatically and emails
(as an attachment) the zone file as a domain.com.txt file. We can then
drop this on the domain compiler and simply upload the zone to the server.

This really eliminates on the need for a lot of copy paste, etc, when we
have customers sending us 10 or 20 domain entries at a time. It also
eliminates mistakes on our part. While we would like to fully automate
it, I doubt we will any time soon for one big reason. We would still
like to review the complied zone personally to make sure that there is
not any bogus info in the zone, etc. I suppose we could create an Apple
script that would also take the file attachment of the zone and then
compile it, and then upload it, but I would rather do this:

I need to find out what it is that makes a QDNS zone file a QDNS zone
file? I had figured it is either a resource fork, or some type of thing
that identifies the file as belonging to QDNS. What I would like to do
is eliminate the need for the compiler in the process by setting up my
PHP form to append the appropriate resource, or file type identifiers to
the zone file it creates so that QDNS server will understand what the
file is when it is uploaded.

Beyond this, I would like to see (as a feature request) a FTP port opened
on the QDNS server to allow us to also upload these files, as well as
communicate directly with the QDNS server to do uploads/deletions of
zones via the Admin and FTP-built in.

Do you follow?

The ultimate goal here is to have our customers create their own zone
files, which will be automatically created, complied and uploaded for use
instantly. Keep in mind that we will of course find a way to have our
scripts check to make sure there are not any bogus entries in the zone
files that are created.

On top of this, we will also use this method in conjunction with our
OpenSRS registration system at thednsplace.com to automatically create
the zones for parked, or hosted domains that register through us, again,
elminating mistakes and wasted time.

Finally, the reason I ask about OSX, or LINUX as a platform for QDNS is
that as we add more and more zone files to QDNS, the problems with the
MacOS files system begin to rear their ugly heads. Try opening a folder
on a Mac with 10,000 files in it. Sucks! Yes the Admin is slow with the
more domains you get in it, but we found a way around that, that speeds
it up about 10,000 %. (if you want to know, email me)

The bigger problem is not the Admin with regards to the amount of zone
files you have, but the directory on the server that houses them. We are
anticipating having about 200,000 domains parked over the next 10 to 15
months, and I really doubt that the MacOS can handle this, and we do not
have the time to manually enter zone files all day when something like
PHP, Perl, FlexMail, MGI, and Netcloak can all do these tasks for us as I
have indicated above.

jer
www.hostdrive.com

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