I've got 2 dns servers running redhat 9 / Bind to provide DNS services to my network. I've been managing DNS entries manually on the master server by editing the zone files and named.conf in a text editor. This works fine for me, but the suits would like an easier preferably web based DNS manager installed on the server. Is there a good premade package for this, or is this something I will need to write?

-Thanks KARL

Webmin works quite well for me.

I've written some software on sourceforge that allows you to both manage your bind DNS records in MySQL as well as use a PHP web interface to modify and push them using rndc reload (hot updating) and error checking with named_checkzone.

http://smbind.sourceforge.net/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/smbind

i recommend webmin too, it has a very nice interface for DNS management, and it is written in Perl

Webmin's great, unless the suits log in and realize that they can do everything- from managing firewall rules to bringing down SSH. Save, of course, you configure a special webmin user that's restricted only to the bind module.

I've run into the same problem at my company, and found that using Webmin was too much of a security risk and was really more than we wanted exposed via the web. Webmin is perfect for those who don't have the time or experience for more robust solutions.

And just to stay non-partisan, there are other software packages from Mice & Men and on SourceForge (like Dixie and NovaDNS and ProBIND - although a few of these either require cron jobs or are several years old) that will administer DNS without administering the whole box.

Excellent, thank you for all your posts. I definitely have a good idea of what I'm getting into now.

I am trying to install smbind. Everything looks good in the config test:

http://x.x.x.x/configtest.php

smbind configtest

This script will try to check some aspects of your smbind configuration and point you to errors where ever it can find them. You need to edit config.php and read the INSTALL file first before you run this script.
Testing config.php...OK
Testing PEAR DB...OK
Testing Smarty...OK
Testing templates_c...OK
Testing path...OK
Testing conf directory...OK
Testing conf file...OK
Testing named-checkconf...OK
Testing named-checkzone...OK
Testing rndc...OK
Testing rndc execution...OK
server is up and running
Testing database connection...OK
Testing database SELECT from zones table...OK Testing database SELECT from users table...OK Testing database SELECT from records table...OK
Testing database INSERT into zones table...OK Testing database INSERT into users table...OK Testing database INSERT into records table...OK
Testing database UPDATE zones table...OK Testing database UPDATE users table...OK Testing database UPDATE records table...OK
Testing database DELETE FROM zones table...OK Testing database DELETE FROM users table...OK Testing database DELETE FROM records table...OK

Congratulations, your setup looks good. Please remember to add the following line to your named.conf:
include "/etc/smbind/smbind.conf";

However, when I just try to navigate to the actual smbind interface http://x.x.x.x

I get this error:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: set_include_path() in /var/www/html/include.php on line 24

I'm thinking I must have the wrong version of php, or need additional packages or something, any ideas?

I'm running, a Redhat 9 system with php-4.2.2-17 installed.

Thanks,
KARL

I believe the error is due to the set_include_path()function only being present in php versions 4.3.0 and greater. I am having trouble finding/installing an rpm for php-4.3.0 for redhat 9. Any hints?

-KARL

Do you know where the SMBIND software package stores it's users and passwords to log into the GUI? If the admin password were to be lost, where could it be changed or reset in the backend instead of in the SMBIND GUI?

-Thanks Karl


I've written some software on sourceforge that allows you to both manage your bind DNS records in MySQL as well as use a PHP web interface to modify and push them using rndc reload (hot updating) and error checking with named_checkzone.

http://smbind.sourceforge.net/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/smbind[/QUOTE]

Hey joelhop,
I don't know why I didn't get emailed about your other posts, but I apologize for being unresponsive. Did you figure out your issue with set_include_path()? That's not an issue I've ever seen before, but I have gotten the smbind to work with Red Hat 9...

Fortunately, your question about the lost username and password info is easier to answer... if you can access the MySQL database from the command line, poke around in the "users" table.

From here, you can add a new admin user by hand to restore access to the GUI:
insert into users (username, password, admin) values ('newadmin', md5('password'), ('yes');

i.e. Username: newadmin, Password: password

or, you can reset a password for an existing account:
update users set password=md5('newpassword') where user='admin';

Hi Bentz,

Great work on smbind. I have a question. After adding my first zone and commiting changes, I notice it updates the file smbind.conf. By default,
the layout looks like this:-

zone "zone.com" {
type master;
file "zone.com";
};

This looks normal. What happens is when BIND is restarted, it is unable to locate zone.com. In config.php, 'path' and 'conf' is set to the following:

$_CONF['path'] = "/var/named/db/";
$_CONF['conf'] = "/var/named/smbind.conf";

If I add a new zone and commit changes, smbind creates the zone in /var/named/db/zone.com and updates smbind.conf. But when BIND is restarted via rndc, it looks for zone.com in /var/named/ instead, causing the following error message to appear in syslog:

named[730]: zone zone.com/IN: loading master file zone.com: file not found

Is there a way to fix this ?

Thanks in advance.
Darryl

Hey there Darryl,
Thanks for checking out smbind.

I'm going to take a wild guess and say that there's a mismatch between the directory you've specified in named.conf and the directory you've specified in smbind.conf.

Open up /etc/named.conf (or where ever it's located on your system) and check out the options{}; section's directory specification. This location tells named to look in this path for all unqualified-pathed zone files. As you might imagine, if you're using $_CONF['path'] = "/var/named/db/"; for smbind, you have to use options { directory "/var/named/db"; }; in named.conf so that they're consistent.

You may have some pre-canned zone files for 0.0.127.in-addr.arpa or localhost or hints that specify where your zone files are; you'd want smbind to point to this same place.

Also, you might want to run through the configtest.php script to make sure all the permissions appear correct, and that apache can write to /var/named/db to create your zone file when you click the Commit link.

Hi Bentz,

You were right. I've made the necessary changes to config.php and named.conf and now everything works. The changes were:

config.php
$_CONF['path'] = "/var/named/db/";
$_CONF['conf'] = "/var/named/smbind.conf";

named.conf:
options { directory "/var/named/db"; };

named.root and localhost both reside in /var/named/ and I had to adjust them to look like:

zone "." {
type hint;
file "../named.root";
};

zone "localhost" {
type master;
file "../localhost.db";
};

and finally:

include "../smbind.conf";

Would be neat though if there's a feature to control smbind.conf from the interface. Thanks again very much.

-- Darryl

P/S: For those who are getting errors about php's session_start() , try installing php4-session and php4-mysql extension and restart apache.

Glad to hear everything's working now!

Regarding your note about php4-session and php4-mysql, which particular distribution/package system are you using that has this problem?

Hi Bentz,

"Regarding your note about php4-session and php4-mysql, which particular distribution/package system are you using that has this problem?"

I'm using the following distribution/packages:

OS:
FreeBSD 5.5-PRERELEASE
FreeBSD 6.0-STABLE


Packages:-

Apache:
apache-1.3.34_4

MySQL:
mysql-server-5.0.19

PEAR:
pear-1.4.6
pear-DB-1.7.6,1

PHP4:
php4-4.4.2_1
php4-mysql-4.4.2_1
php4-pcre-4.4.2_1
php4-session-4.4.2_1
php4-xml-4.4.2_1

- Darryl