[BlueOnyx:12002] Enhancement request - also-notify in named.conf

[Gary Sedgwick]

Hi everyone,

I'm new to the list although I've browsed the archives many a time...

I've been using BlueQuartz for quite some years now, and am in the process
of transferring a server over to BlueOnyx, which is going well.  As part
of this process, I've also been reviewing each part of my setup,
especially as a lot of the underlying software is on a newer version or
has been improved.

Whilst reviewing the DNS setup, I realised I could really do with a
feature that should be easy to implement on a very basic level, but I
thought I should mention it here in case others have ideas or input.  NB
I'd be quite happy to take this on as a small development project...

Basically, I'm using DNS Made Easy for secondary nameservers where the
zones are transferred from my BlueOnyx server acting as master.  DNS Made
Easy have a number of Anycast IP addresses which you can use as
nameservers for zones, but these are *not* the IP addresses that handle
the zone transfers or notify messages - they have a separate set of IPs
for that.  Therein lies the problem: bind will send notify messages to the
nameservers for a zone, but these are not the right IP addresses in this
case.  I can add the correct addresses into the "allow zone transfer" box
in the GUI, and this adds an allow-transfer statement into the options
clause in the named.conf; however, this doesn't in itself trigger *notify*
messages being sent to these IPs.  What I could really do with is an
almost duplicate line, but  also-notify instead of allow-transfer; then
bind should send notify to these IPs when there is a change to a zone. 
Without this, you have to wait for the RR to expire in the secondary name
servers, and this can be a real pain when migrating servers etc.

So at a very basic level, that's all I need.  But perhaps it might be
beneficial to have a "Generate also-notify" tick box in the GUI to control
whether this is added or not (and to ensure no regression if the box isn't
ticked)?  And then I started wondering whether there are any other
features of bind that could be exposed via the GUI... and hence thought
I'd post this to the list!  I know there's a lot to bind now, such as
views etc... but are there any features people are crying out for to be
exposed via BlueOnyx?

Maybe also something worth visiting is the structure of include files in
the named.conf.  There's an include directive after the options clause -
it might be nicer to have this *inside* the clause (assuming that's
possible), as you're only allowed one such clause, and it's where
something like also-notify should go (hence I couldn't use this include
file, which would at least have been safe with future yum updates).  Maybe
a nice-to-have would be to have this include file exposed (via an editor)
in the GUI...

Hope that all makes sense and is an appropriate first post :)  As I said,
I'd be keen to do some work on this to get it rolled out in an official
patch, so please do point me in the right direction to get started!

Thanks,

Gary