Re: DNS servers
On Tue, Nov 19, 2002 at 11:37:11PM -0200, Adriano Nagelschmidt Rodrigues wrote:
> Russell Coker writes:
> > Many people recommended DJBDNS (both on and off list). I have read the
> > following paper which leads me to believe that DJBDNS is slow and has other
> > deficiencies. Brad is someone I have a lot of faith in, so I am not even
> > going to bother reading DJB's response to this paper.
> >
> > http://www.shub-internet.org/brad/papers/dnscomparison/
>
> And for those who prefer reason to faith (at least in mundane matters ;-)
>
> http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/knowles.html
>
> Also of interest:
>
> http://cr.yp.to/qmail/knowles.html
if djb actually gave a damn about providing a viable replacement for
bind then he'd climb down off his pedestal and implement native support
for bind-style configuration and zone files in djbdns. not a
translator, not a converter, but native support for the existing files.
nobody with more than a handful of domains is going to throw everything
away and convert to a new nameserver program that they know nothing
about...and haven't been able to test adequately because it can't
(won't!) read their hundreds or thousands of existing zone files.
i'd love him to do this. i've been wanting a replacement for bind for
years.
unfortunately, it's the qmail problem all over again - djb sees no
benefit at all in backwards compatibility so, IMO, djbdns is doomed to
the same role as qmail - a good example showing the way forward but
ultimately destined to be superceded by another program which learns
from its successes (and mistakes!) and also provides backwards-compatibility.
the successor program will also be free software, with a real free
software license rather than djb's non-free license.
at one time i had hopes that the Dents[1] would be this bind
replacement. it had a good design, a good dev team, and it was GPL.
unfortunately, the project died.
[1] http://sourceforge.net/projects/dents/
it would also help in testing and/or migrating to djb's software if he
tossed out his bizarre systems administration ideas and used plain-text
config files like everyone/everything else rather than magic filenames
inside a hard-coded directory tree to configure things. IMO, he's a
good programmer but a lousy systems admin.
he should toss out the crappy ucspi-tcp and daemontools too - he may
like them, but they're basically just a needless reinvention of inetd &
tcpwrappers that provide no advantages but are significantly uglier to
configure and use. it's as if he reinvents stuff that works perfectly
well just to make people conform to his strange ideas about how systems
should be configured - throw everything out and implement DJB's One True
Way.
craig
--
craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au>
Fabricati Diem, PVNC.
-- motto of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch
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