[Pdns-users] Frontend for PowerDNS ?!

[milkteeth]

Does anyone knows about a reliable frontend for PowerDNS to use with PHP-5,
MySQL-5 ?!
I have tried a few:
PowerAdmin: not being updated anymore
FreshDNS: still beta
WebDNS: not goodenough
Tupa: also not so promising

I would really appreciate if someone could tell me of a good/working
frontend for PowerDNS.
Maybe a frontend which u might be using yourself.

Thanks a lot in advance!

[Joe Sloan]

Post by milkteeth
Does anyone knows about a reliable frontend for PowerDNS to use with PHP-5,
MySQL-5 ?!
PowerAdmin: not being updated anymore
FreshDNS: still beta
WebDNS: not goodenough
Tupa: also not so promising
I would really appreciate if someone could tell me of a good/working
frontend for PowerDNS.
Maybe a frontend which u might be using yourself.

I was initially excited about powerdns, but in the subsequent fruitless
search for a good management utility, I've concluded that it's not
practical for us, since dns data maintenance is a highly skilled task
with powerdns. The management wants to farm out the daily dns activities
to level one personnel, and there is currently no suitable admin
interface to powerdns to make that possible.

So we're watching pdns and hoping for an eventual solution, but for now
we're compelled to stay with bind 9, and add something like an
appliansys dnsbox300 as the dns master, to provide a web based dns
management interface which can be turned over to personnel who are
reasonably intelligent, but not necessarily highly skilled or experienced.

I'm still playing pdns on my home network, while looking for that
missing piece, because I like it, and don't mind doing sql queries to
maintain zone data.

Joe

[John Armstrong]

What problems / features do you need in PowerDNS Admin that are not there?

Its easy enough to pick this back up and maintain it. I've been using
the 2005 version for years with no problems and would not mind taking
it on.

John-

Post by Joe Sloan

Post by milkteeth
Does anyone knows about a reliable frontend for PowerDNS to use with PHP-5,
MySQL-5 ?!
PowerAdmin: not being updated anymore
FreshDNS: still beta
WebDNS: not goodenough
Tupa: also not so promising
I would really appreciate if someone could tell me of a good/working
frontend for PowerDNS.
Maybe a frontend which u might be using yourself.

I was initially excited about powerdns, but in the subsequent fruitless
search for a good management utility, I've concluded that it's not
practical for us, since dns data maintenance is a highly skilled task
with powerdns. The management wants to farm out the daily dns activities
to level one personnel, and there is currently no suitable admin
interface to powerdns to make that possible.
So we're watching pdns and hoping for an eventual solution, but for now
we're compelled to stay with bind 9, and add something like an
appliansys dnsbox300 as the dns master, to provide a web based dns
management interface which can be turned over to personnel who are
reasonably intelligent, but not necessarily highly skilled or experienced.
I'm still playing pdns on my home network, while looking for that
missing piece, because I like it, and don't mind doing sql queries to
maintain zone data.
Joe
_______________________________________________
Pdns-users mailing list
http://mailman.powerdns.com/mailman/listinfo/pdns-users

[Matt Kelly]

I would like to see a select all button so I can assign an entire
class of PTR entries to a user :)

--Matt

Post by John Armstrong
What problems / features do you need in PowerDNS Admin that are not there?
Its easy enough to pick this back up and maintain it. I've been using
the 2005 version for years with no problems and would not mind taking
it on.
John-

Post by Joe Sloan

Post by milkteeth
Does anyone knows about a reliable frontend for PowerDNS to use with PHP-5,
MySQL-5 ?!
PowerAdmin: not being updated anymore
FreshDNS: still beta
WebDNS: not goodenough
Tupa: also not so promising
I would really appreciate if someone could tell me of a good/working
frontend for PowerDNS.
Maybe a frontend which u might be using yourself.

I was initially excited about powerdns, but in the subsequent
fruitless
search for a good management utility, I've concluded that it's not
practical for us, since dns data maintenance is a highly skilled task
with powerdns. The management wants to farm out the daily dns
activities
to level one personnel, and there is currently no suitable admin
interface to powerdns to make that possible.
So we're watching pdns and hoping for an eventual solution, but for now
we're compelled to stay with bind 9, and add something like an
appliansys dnsbox300 as the dns master, to provide a web based dns
management interface which can be turned over to personnel who are
reasonably intelligent, but not necessarily highly skilled or
experienced.
I'm still playing pdns on my home network, while looking for that
missing piece, because I like it, and don't mind doing sql queries to
maintain zone data.
Joe
_______________________________________________
Pdns-users mailing list
http://mailman.powerdns.com/mailman/listinfo/pdns-users

_______________________________________________
Pdns-users mailing list
http://mailman.powerdns.com/mailman/listinfo/pdns-users

[Joe Sloan]

Post by John Armstrong
What problems / features do you need in PowerDNS Admin that are not there?
Its easy enough to pick this back up and maintain it. I've been using
the 2005 version for years with no problems and would not mind taking
it on.

That would be great if someone like yourself were willing to step up.

I'll have to look at it again, to remember what it needs. I looked at
several, and most tended to leave something or other to be done by hand
behind the scenes. Also, none of them would work out of the box on a
standard php5 installation.

Joe

[John Armstrong]

Double check the PHP5 thing, works on my PHP 5 installs (as long as
mysql is enabled).

If we can get a real list of features / fixes together I'm more then
willing to work on it. So far most of what I've heard is pretty small.

John-

Post by Joe Sloan

Post by John Armstrong
What problems / features do you need in PowerDNS Admin that are not there?
Its easy enough to pick this back up and maintain it. I've been using
the 2005 version for years with no problems and would not mind taking
it on.

That would be great if someone like yourself were willing to step up.
I'll have to look at it again, to remember what it needs. I looked at
several, and most tended to leave something or other to be done by hand
behind the scenes. Also, none of them would work out of the box on a
standard php5 installation.
Joe
_______________________________________________
Pdns-users mailing list
http://mailman.powerdns.com/mailman/listinfo/pdns-users

[Jan-Piet Mens]

Post by John Armstrong
What problems / features do you need in PowerDNS Admin that are not there?

1. PowerAdmin is terribly slow for anything more than a handful of
zones. Methinks browsing on a x zone/page basis would be best, plus
of course "search for zone to edit".

2. Disallow adding CNAME and other data. It kills BIND zone transfers ;-)

-JP

[Rene Bartsch]

Post by Jan-Piet Mens

Post by John Armstrong
What problems / features do you need in PowerDNS Admin that are not there?

1. PowerAdmin is terribly slow for anything more than a handful of
zones. Methinks browsing on a x zone/page basis would be best, plus
of course "search for zone to edit".
2. Disallow adding CNAME and other data. It kills BIND zone transfers ;-)

Is there any PHP webfrontend which can handle SRV- AND NAPTR-Records and
checks for correct syntax of the records?

Thanks for any hint

Renne

[Duane]

Post by Rene Bartsch
Is there any PHP webfrontend which can handle SRV- AND NAPTR-Records and
checks for correct syntax of the records?

I think this is the wrong way to go about NAPTR records at least, I'd be
more inclined to making something that builds the correct syntax from
prompted input, rather then expect the user to know it.
--
Best regards,
Duane

http://www.freeauth.org - Enterprise Two Factor Authentication
http://www.nodedb.com - Think globally, network locally
http://www.sydneywireless.com - Telecommunications Freedom
http://e164.org - Because e164.arpa is a tax on VoIP

"In the long run the pessimist may be proved right,
but the optimist has a better time on the trip."

[Rene Bartsch]

Post by Duane

Post by Rene Bartsch
Is there any PHP webfrontend which can handle SRV- AND NAPTR-Records and
checks for correct syntax of the records?

I think this is the wrong way to go about NAPTR records at least, I'd be
more inclined to making something that builds the correct syntax from
prompted input, rather then expect the user to know it.

Which I would prefer, too! ;-)

So chained dropdown-boxes have to be used a la NAPTR -> Protocol (using
IANA/RFC syntax internally) -> text field. Any other idea?

Renne

[Duane]

Post by Rene Bartsch
So chained dropdown-boxes have to be used a la NAPTR -> Protocol (using
IANA/RFC syntax internally) -> text field. Any other idea?

For NAPTR specific stuff, perhaps you should take a gander at
www.e164.org ;)

While it's used as a frontend to PDNS, it's not really suitable as a
general purpose DNS frontend, in fact to build the data structure for
PDNS we store a bunch of meta data and use that behind the scenes rather
then the raw DNS information.

We also accept some information in regular expression formatting then
convert it behind the scenes to something PDNS can deal with at this
point in time.
--
Best regards,
Duane

http://www.freeauth.org - Enterprise Two Factor Authentication
http://www.nodedb.com - Think globally, network locally
http://www.sydneywireless.com - Telecommunications Freedom
http://e164.org - Because e164.arpa is a tax on VoIP

"In the long run the pessimist may be proved right,
but the optimist has a better time on the trip."

[Duane]

Post by Jan-Piet Mens
2. Disallow adding CNAME and other data. It kills BIND zone transfers ;-)

Why does it? Wouldn't it be better to fix what ever real problem exists
then glossing over them and denying users full DNS functionality?

For what its worth, I haven't noticed any problems with zone transfers.
--
Best regards,
Duane

http://www.freeauth.org - Enterprise Two Factor Authentication
http://www.nodedb.com - Think globally, network locally
http://www.sydneywireless.com - Telecommunications Freedom
http://e164.org - Because e164.arpa is a tax on VoIP

"In the long run the pessimist may be proved right,
but the optimist has a better time on the trip."

[Kenneth Marshall]

Post by Duane

Post by Jan-Piet Mens
2. Disallow adding CNAME and other data. It kills BIND zone transfers ;-)

Why does it? Wouldn't it be better to fix what ever real problem exists
then glossing over them and denying users full DNS functionality?
For what its worth, I haven't noticed any problems with zone transfers.
--
Best regards,
Duane

FYI,

We were bitten by this problem with our in-house webtool for PDNS as
well. The problem was not a problem with PDNS but with incorrect information
in the zones. The RFC specifically disallows the presence of both a CNAME
and any other record with the same key value. We plugged it with a trigger
in the DB while we patched the webtool. If this happens, the BIND DNS slave
server aborts the zone transfer with an error and tries again, and again,
and again,... Can you say self-imposed DoS three times fast? Another issue
that our in-house tool has that we just noticed, is that it allows mixed-
case on the key value. That turned the PDNS lookups into sequential scans
because there was not a valid index for that lookup. By and large, a tool
like this needs to be very careful about vetting the information provided
before inserting it into the backend DB.

Ken

[Jan-Piet Mens]

Post by Duane

Post by Jan-Piet Mens
2. Disallow adding CNAME and other data. It kills BIND zone transfers ;-)

Why does it? Wouldn't it be better to fix what ever real problem exists
then glossing over them and denying users full DNS functionality?

RFC 1034, section 3.6.2 specifies: "If a CNAME RR is present at a
node, no other data should be present"

If other data (say an A RR) is present, BIND refuses (correctly) to
transfer the zone.

Post by Duane
For what its worth, I haven't noticed any problems with zone transfers.

I certainly have, in cases where users erroneously add a CNAME to a
record that already exists. BIND tries again and again, and then of
course, expires the zone.

-JP

[Duane]

Post by Jan-Piet Mens
RFC 1034, section 3.6.2 specifies: "If a CNAME RR is present at a
node, no other data should be present"
If other data (say an A RR) is present, BIND refuses (correctly) to
transfer the zone.

So the problem isn't with CNAME records, but people doing stupid things
and so of course one solution is to prevent them from having CNAMEs,
wouldn't it just make more sense to have triggers or something in the
database prevent people from shooting themselves in the foot rather then
reducing features?

Post by Jan-Piet Mens
I certainly have, in cases where users erroneously add a CNAME to a
record that already exists. BIND tries again and again, and then of
course, expires the zone.

Perhaps I learnt from bind prior to using PDNS, but now that you explain
it this way I remember upgrading between bind versions and transfers
work with one version and not the new version. It was a very long time
ago so details are a bit hazy.
--
Best regards,
Duane

http://www.freeauth.org - Enterprise Two Factor Authentication
http://www.nodedb.com - Think globally, network locally
http://www.sydneywireless.com - Telecommunications Freedom
http://e164.org - Because e164.arpa is a tax on VoIP

"In the long run the pessimist may be proved right,
but the optimist has a better time on the trip."

[Roger Libiez]

Post by milkteeth
Does anyone knows about a reliable frontend for PowerDNS to use with PHP-5,
MySQL-5 ?!
PowerAdmin: not being updated anymore
FreshDNS: still beta
WebDNS: not goodenough
Tupa: also not so promising
I would really appreciate if someone could tell me of a good/working
frontend for PowerDNS.
Maybe a frontend which u might be using yourself.

Well I don't know how good or bad it is, but I hacked up something for
my own internal use based on parts from a forum package I also develop.
Yes, it's a strange mating, but the result works well enough for my
purposes. End users don't seem to have any problems figuring it out either.

http://www.iguanadons.net/pdns-admin

I know it's been getting a lot of download traffic but I've not heard
back from anyone using it ( unless the spam filters ate it? ) to say
whether it worked out well for them or not.

[Joseph Dobransky]

PowerAdmin is probably the best out of the bunch. Problem I ran into is
that it turns into quite the little turtle when the domain count is
higher than 1k. Also, I think the user features / functions could be
seriously overhauled.
--
************************************
* Joseph Dobransky
* Webhosting Administrator
* 1.727.953.6706
* 1.888.478.0555
* http://www.nightowlswebspace.com
************************************
* AIM: CrankyCronos
* Yahoo: skeeter1jd
* MSN: ***@hotmail.com
* ICQ: 21228143
************************************

[Kenneth Marshall]

Post by Joseph Dobransky
PowerAdmin is probably the best out of the bunch. Problem I ran into is
that it turns into quite the little turtle when the domain count is higher
than 1k. Also, I think the user features / functions could be seriously
overhauled.
--
************************************
* Joseph Dobransky * Webhosting Administrator *
1.727.953.6706 * 1.888.478.0555 *
http://www.nightowlswebspace.com ************************************
* AIM: CrankyCronos * Yahoo: skeeter1jd *
************************************

The process of pulling up the records in poweradmin was slow
because it wanted to count the contents of each domain everytime
the screen was loaded as well as not providing an easy way to
restrict the records pulled which resulted in many, many screens
log page displays.

Ken

[AJ McKee]

Hi All,

We have been working on a frontend for PDNS for sometime now and gone
through several betas with our customers. Some of the functionality has
been delayed or is not suitable for public consumption.

However given our use of PowerDNS, it is about time we contributed
something back to the community, so we will undertake to build a
community version of our management suite and release it under a GPL
licence. We don't have a project page or anything setup at the moemnt,
however if you want to mail me off list with you suggestions for
features, we will consider adding them to the first build or to schedule
them in subsequent builds. At present we will only be able to support
SQL backends but will endevour to build LDAP functionality in the future
too.

We will close submissions on the 20th of January 2008 18:00 GMT and
commit to a inital beta for release on the 17th March 2008 18:00 GMT.

While we realise that there are several interfaces out there for Power
DNS, we do believe there is room for one more.

It is our hoped that together we can relase a product that will satisfy
your needs and contribute in a meaningful way back to the PDNS community.

Regards
AJ

Post by Joseph Dobransky
PowerAdmin is probably the best out of the bunch. Problem I ran into
is that it turns into quite the little turtle when the domain count is
higher than 1k. Also, I think the user features / functions could be
seriously overhauled.

[Chris Seufert]

Under debian (Etch) using the .deb files, it almost works in PHP5 last

time i installed it, but i did have some issues, and ended up running
php4 in fast cgi mode at a few sites that I've setup up poweradmin at. I
still dont think poweradmin is suitable for users without sufficient
knowledge of DNS.

On this topic, I actually ended up writing my own web-frontend
administration to powerdns, along with apache, postfix, and dovecot, due
to the severe lack of any user-friendly "nice" administration tools.
Unfortunately its not something I have the power to release to the
general public. But basically I dont think its all that much work to put
something together to manage just powerdns, depending on how crazy you
want to go with access controls.

-Chris

Post by John Armstrong
Double check the PHP5 thing, works on my PHP 5 installs (as long as
mysql is enabled).
If we can get a real list of features / fixes together I'm more then
willing to work on it. So far most of what I've heard is pretty small.
John-

Post by Joe Sloan

Post by John Armstrong
What problems / features do you need in PowerDNS Admin that are not there?
Its easy enough to pick this back up and maintain it. I've been using
the 2005 version for years with no problems and would not mind taking
it on.

That would be great if someone like yourself were willing to step up.
I'll have to look at it again, to remember what it needs. I looked at
several, and most tended to leave something or other to be done by hand
behind the scenes. Also, none of them would work out of the box on a
standard php5 installation.
Joe
_______________________________________________
Pdns-users mailing list
http://mailman.powerdns.com/mailman/listinfo/pdns-users

_______________________________________________
Pdns-users mailing list
http://mailman.powerdns.com/mailman/listinfo/pdns-users

[Augie Schwer]

Post by milkteeth
Does anyone knows about a reliable frontend for PowerDNS to use with PHP-5,
MySQL-5 ?!
PowerAdmin: not being updated anymore
FreshDNS: still beta
WebDNS: not goodenough
Tupa: also not so promising

I'm using ZoneAdmin internally :

http://sourceforge.net/projects/zoneadmin

Currently the PowerDNS Web Front-end field is playing itself out, no
clear leaders yet, but a few enthusiastic upstarts.

I think that anyone who is serious about offering DNS services to
customers is writing their own interface; which if you already have
some web developers shouldn't be that hard; hand them a decent spec.
and point them at the MySQL back-end and call it done.

[Mark Constable]

Post by Augie Schwer

Post by milkteeth
PowerAdmin: not being updated anymore
FreshDNS: still beta
WebDNS: not goodenough
Tupa: also not so promising

http://sourceforge.net/projects/zoneadmin
I think that anyone who is serious about offering DNS services to
customers is writing their own interface; which if you already have
some web developers shouldn't be that hard; hand them a decent spec.
and point them at the MySQL back-end and call it done.

Yes but the rest of us are left out with no decent frontend.

I'm going to start hacking on PowerAdmin and I'll make my
efforts available from a Git repo within a few weeks. I'm
not suggesting my hack will be in any way usable, just a
start at bringing that codebase up to my needs...

. PDO with SQLite as the default
. good CSS and possibly XHTML compliant (or close)
. AJAX aware using jQuery
. multihosting off a single codebase
. above means using a single frontend controller
. *NO* addon template system or MVC based framework

My alterations may be too radical for most other folks so
I have just imported poweradmin-1.2.7-patched.tar.gz into...

http://pdnsadmin.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/

which can be pulled by anyone using...

svn co http://pdnsadmin.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ pdnsadmin

and more importantly, if anyone wants update permissions,
and already has or doesn't mind getting getting a Google
ID (including for Gmail etc), then just email me that ID
and I'll add you as a member of the project. All svn
updates go to this Google group which also means an RSS
feed is available for all changes.

http://groups.google.com.au/group/pdnsadmin

Took me all of 15 minutes to setup.

--markc

[bert hubert]

Post by Mark Constable
I'm going to start hacking on PowerAdmin and I'll make my
efforts available from a Git repo within a few weeks. I'm
not suggesting my hack will be in any way usable, just a
start at bringing that codebase up to my needs...

Good luck!

[Norbert Sendetzky]

Hi all

[Jan-Piet Mens]

It is not that all current projects are bad, but none of them
are really good either

That is putting it lightly ;-)

-JP

[Daniel]

Guten Tag bert hubert,

Post by bert hubert

Post by Mark Constable
I'm going to start hacking on PowerAdmin and I'll make my
efforts available from a Git repo within a few weeks. I'm
not suggesting my hack will be in any way usable, just a
start at bringing that codebase up to my needs...

Good luck!

[Udo Rader]

Post by Daniel
Guten Tag bert hubert,

Post by Mark Constable
I'm going to start hacking on PowerAdmin and I'll make my
efforts available from a Git repo within a few weeks. I'm
not suggesting my hack will be in any way usable, just a
start at bringing that codebase up to my needs...

[Daniel]

Guten Tag Udo Rader,

So what about contributing it back? Open your source

i will do that when i am ready with it.

I can, if u wish have a "demo login"

Some fueatures at this moment dont work.. ok 2 features ;)

[Udo Rader]

Post by Daniel
Guten Tag Udo Rader,

So what about contributing it back? Open your source

i will do that when i am ready with it.
I can, if u wish have a "demo login"

Yes, that would be appreciated :-)

Post by Daniel
Some fueatures at this moment dont work.. ok 2 features ;)

Can you outline a bit what you have changed/improved so far?

[Daniel]

Guten Tag Udo Rader,

Post by Daniel
Guten Tag Udo Rader,

So what about contributing it back? Open your source

i will do that when i am ready with it.
I can, if u wish have a "demo login"

?Yes, that would be appreciated

u will get it in a seperate email soon ;)

Post by Daniel
Some fueatures at this moment dont work.. ok 2 features

Can you outline a bit what you have changed/improved so far?

The User management is better. We have the following Levels:

Superadmin: is allowed to see/do everthing.
Admin: Is allowed to add Reseller/Enduser (he se only his domains/customers)

Reseller: Is allowed to add endusers
User: as it was before.

Support up to 4 Nameservers
Support for domains IDN (u can add blä.de and it will automatic
translate it in the right IDN code)

Domain limit for each admin/reseller/user.

U can add XXXX domains in one field and not one by one.

U can say (all records from IP: xxx change in IP: yyy
Database tuneing (faster searching as listings)
New record typ (SPF)

But u will get the demo login soon so u can check it ;)

[Steve Sobol]

Post by Augie Schwer
http://sourceforge.net/projects/zoneadmin
Currently the PowerDNS Web Front-end field is playing itself out, no
clear leaders yet, but a few enthusiastic upstarts.
I think that anyone who is serious about offering DNS services to
customers is writing their own interface; which if you already have
some web developers shouldn't be that hard; hand them a decent spec.
and point them at the MySQL back-end and call it done.

I've been considering writing something, I just don't know if it's worth my
time....

[Rudolph Bott]

Hey List,

Post by Augie Schwer

Post by milkteeth
Does anyone knows about a reliable frontend for PowerDNS to use with PHP-5,
MySQL-5 ?!
PowerAdmin: not being updated anymore
FreshDNS: still beta
WebDNS: not goodenough
Tupa: also not so promising

Yay!

Post by Augie Schwer
http://sourceforge.net/projects/zoneadmin

Thats it, exactly..

Post by Augie Schwer
Currently the PowerDNS Web Front-end field is playing itself out, no
clear leaders yet, but a few enthusiastic upstarts.
I think that anyone who is serious about offering DNS services to
customers is writing their own interface; which if you already have
some web developers shouldn't be that hard; hand them a decent spec.
and point them at the MySQL back-end and call it done.

I'm the main developer of the ZoneAdmin project...unfortunatly I didn't have the time in the past few months to push the development further ahead as I was quite busy with my regular work. I definetly look forward to do some serious coding/enhancement in the near feature (maybe sometime around the
upcoming holidays) and to release another beta version. Since a lot of you guys also use other pdns backends (than the generic mysql one) one of the next "larger" changes will be to switch to a database abstraction layer to allow at least managing of more than just one backend. Other hints/requests
are welcome - currently I'm working on a (rather simple) plugin interface which allows you to insert custom "actions" before/after updating/adding/deleting records/zones (e.g. mail notifications, automatic adding of reverse records etc.).



Mit freundlichen Grüßen / with kind regards

Rudolph Bott

[t***@hotmail.com]

I've been using TUPA ( http://www.tupa-dns.org/ ) for a while and it
seems to be doing its job,

I tried to get involved in the project to improve things that annoyed
me, but the developers behind it seem to have gone AWOL

If anyone out there is interested I wouldn't mind working on one of
these projects.

In addition, I have a group of people interested in paying license fees
for a "name server in a box" type of application so if anyone out there
is interested I guess we can work together.