Slashdot Mirror

Other DNS software

This is a list of some other DNS software out there:

Freely downloadable DNS servers

Caching DNS servers

• BIND 9 is a complete rewrite of BIND, and, as such, probably does not have the security issues that previous versions of BIND has. In fact, one of the BIND developers found a security problem in earlier versions of MaraDNS. Very full-featured, and is the reference standard for the newer DNS RFCs.
• Oak DNS is a DNS server written completely in python. It is compatible (I think) with both BIND zone files and cache files.
• pdnsd is a recursive caching DNS server. Paul Rombouts is the current maintainer of this program.
• Posadis is another DNS server project, similiar to MaraDNS. This server is now both a resolving and an suthoritative DNS server.

Non-recursive DNS servers

• PowerDNS is an authoritative-only DNS server with support for, among other things, SQL. I would like to applaud the PowerDNS developers for making a libre release of this software. Note: Recursive code is in the works; PowerDNS will soon enough be a fully functioning recursive DNS server.
• DnsJAVA is an authoritative-only DNS server written in Java.
• NSD is an authoritative-only DNS server which is compatible with BIND zone files.
• MyDNS is an authoritative-only DNS server which uses MySQL as a database back end.
• The Pliant language/package comes with a DNS server. This DNS server can not recursively process DNS queries given a list of root servers.
• Twisted includes a non-recursive DNS server.
• The Eddit project includes a DNS server
• SheerDNS is a simple non-caching DNS server that stores all records as their own files.

Abandoned DNS server projects

These are DNS server projects which have not released any files for six months or longer, and which never became functioning recursive (caching) DNS servers.

• MooDNS is another DNS server project. A CVS checkout on January 21, 2003 shows that no files have been updated since July 20, 2002, except for a single readme file updated on August 1, 2002. This project is abadoned.

  I have made a tarball available for people who do not want to bother with a CVS checkout.

• Dents is a DNS server that showed a lot of promise. Unfortunatly, no files have been released since 1999.
• Yaku-NS is a DNS server geared towards embedded systems. According to the changelog, no one has made any changes to this software since Feburary, 2001.
• CustomDNS has not released any files since the summer of 2000.

Other

• LdapDNS is a small DNS server which converts DNS requests in to LDAP requests, without caching.
• DnsPython is a DNS toolkit for Python.

In practice too

BTW, what alteratives to BIND exist for Linuxand *BSD? I actually don't know and would like to know.

There are now a number of alternative packages that may have advantages for many deployments. E.g.:

MaraDNS is a general-purpose, fast DNS server package (doing recursive, authoritative, and caching roles, plus fully supporting zone transfers):
http://www.maradns.org/

pdnsd is a small caching-only DNS server with a disk-based cache, suitable for small networks and workstations:
http://home.t-online.de/home/Moestl/

Dnsmasq is a small authoritative and caching DNS server for a group of NATted / IPmasqued machines (optionally pulling names from DHCP leases):
http://www.thekelleys.org.uk/dnsmasq/

DNRD is a small caching-only DNS server for NAT / IPmasq networks:
http://dnrd.nevalabs.org/

MyDNS is a MySQL-based authoritative and caching server (no recursive service) suitable for very large sites. In such roles, it's faster and more responsive than BIND9, even though the latter uses a RAM-based cache:
http://mydns.bboy.net/

ldapdns implements the same idea, except out of an LDAP database. Again, much faster than BIND9:
http://nimh.org/code/ldapdns/

GnuDIP is an authoritative server for Dynamic DNS:
http://gnudip2.sourceforge.net/gnudip-www/

NSD is a high-performance authoritative-only daemon:
http://www.nlnetlabs.nl/nsd/

PowerDNS (open source as of 2002-11-25) is an authoritative-only daemon with a modular structure supporting various back-end information stores such as SQL databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle 8i, Oracle 9i, IBM DB2, and others via ODBC), BIND zonefiles and other file formats, and LDAP directories. Supports AXFR zone transfers.
http://www.powerdns.com/products/powerdns/

CustomDNS is a authoritative-only daemon for both static addresses and its variant form of dynamic DNS:
http://customdns.sourceforge.net/

lbnamed is a similar authoritative-only daemon for static and dynamic information, with a load-balancing multi-machine architecture:
http://www.stanford.edu/~riepel/lbnamed/

Posadis is another fast authoritative-only daemon:
http://posadis.sourceforge.net/

dents is another general-purpose DNS server, but is perenially unfinished, and is probably dead, at this point:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/dents/

Pliant DNS Server is another general-purpose DNS server, although it may not support zone transfers:
http://pliant.cx/pliant/protocol/dns/

Yaku-NS is another small, fast general-purpose DNS server:
http://www.kyuzz.org/antirez/ens.html

Twisted Names is an authoritative and caching DNS server, written in Python:
http://twistedmatrix.com/documents/howto/names

Oak DNS Server is an authoritative and caching DNS server, supporting dynamic DNS updates and AAAA records. It's written in Python, and doesn't need to run privileged:
http://www.digitallumber.com/oak

dnsjava is a minimal, authoritative-only server, a resolver library, and a set of DNS utilities, all written in Java:
http://www.xbill.org/dnsjava/

Related:

FireDNS is a client library for DNS requests, with emphasis on speed and asynchronous processing. Written in C, and has low-timeout blocking functions. Can be used to relace standard libc resolver library functions like getbyhostname with much faster equivalent code:
http://ares.penguinhosting.net/~ian/

GNU adns is a resolver library for C (and C++) programs, and a collection of useful DNS resolver utilities:
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~ian/adns/

Proprietary packages include:

UltraDNS (UltraDNS Corporation)
djbdns/tinydns
ATLAS (Verisign)
BINDPlus (Information Network Eng. Group, Inc.)
Global Name Service (Nominum, Inc.)
NeDNS (Neteka, Inc.)

I maintain this list at http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/linux-info/dns-servers

Rick Moen
rick@linuxmafia.com

Ah, but there are 2 kinds of performance, see:

Magic Bullet performance, and

No Weak Points performance.

In Magic Bullet performance, you do one thing, really really well, and ignore any potential problems ( single CPU motherboards are in this category ), but ...

... in No Weak Points performance, you instead make sure that no matter what .. the system continues responding, functioning, reducing whatever obstacle/work/opposition it's there to deal-with.

Single Ultrafast CPU, is so very fast that rarely does some wonky process saturate the CPU, .. BUT .. if one does, you're experiencing a DoS from your-own system, because there isn't another CPU ( not saturated ) that is/would-be paying any attention to you...

The believing-mode ( think-of-the-money, or just-believe-in-this, or ignore-what-alternatives-may-be, or propaganda, etc. ) is a human rendition of Magic Bullet Mode...

Ah, but there is also No Weak Points mode, eh?

in No Weak Points mode, there are 2(+) CPUs, sharing the work, so that some process would have to saturate both of 'em ( drastically less likely ), simultaneously, to DoS the system.

In other words, it's much more likely to be responsive .. every second it's running, though it mayn't be as quick at finishing something as the single-CPU version would, when it wasn't experiencing saturation... ( partly due to slower chips, partly due to non-shareable tasks or non-threaded processes ).

The Japanese developments called 'Go' ( the game ), and 'Ninpo' ( formerly nin-jutsu ), and the ( unknown nationality ) programming environment/language Pliant all embody the No Weak Points mode of surviving ongoingly ( whereas, our planet's fossil-record is littered with the remnants of races who, magic-bullet-style, evolved-themselves 'off a cliff', as it were, due to specialization or dependency ).

Magic Bullet mode is good for when things are peachy, and the system ( one's-self, being a possible 'system' ) is 'in its element', but...

No Weak Points mode is better at ensuring enduring survival.

Continuity plans, that include having backups, and having alternate sites, and cross-training, and developing understanding of 'what's going on' ( outside one's specialty ) and not putting all one's family/execs in one plane, etc. are showing No Weak Points mode...

Consider the meaning-of ( and justification-for ) 'diversification', and see if it doesn't contrast directly with 'consolidation'...

( and remember! civilized minds cannot hold balance between two concepts, for even a second, so ... where was I? )

As for nothing needing so strong a CPU, though, .. I gather all RSYNC servers need very strong CPU because the RSYNC system doesn't cache the individual-block checksums, so the machine has to calculate 'em all every time the given file is requested...
... and compression, movie-viewing, etc. are all requiring strong CPU, too

Reading around his site I think I'm impressed by the volume of work put in, and (if it is indeed as he claims), the quality of e.g. complex number manipulation.

Mozart is a poor choice of name, unless it is very very very old - because it is already taken by a programming system (see the Oz language).

Also, check out Pliant which is (relatively) mature, and does most of what is discussed on the site and a whole lot more.

Pliant.cx ... don't let the .cx scare you :)

I think Pliant proves that Linux doesn't have to suck (and, not wanting a flamewar, but why it has a better architecture than the BSDs). This does actually sound like a project that could go somewhere and it reminds of more of MacOSX than BeOS (which is a good thing).

Interesting links on Self can be found here.

Where Pliant syntax is discussed, it is said that it is original because "The Pliant parser is original in that it doesn't rely on an automaton derived from a grammar. It is simpler, but more customizable and therefore much more powerful. "

I'd like to point out that the parsing extensibility of Pliant can be found in the Forth language and I believe that Rebol may also have some of these advantages. The language Lua also comes to mind as a language with syntactic extensibility.

---

Starting with 4.0, VB isn't interpreted any more. It is compiled, and while it isn't as well optimized as C it is pretty durn fast.

Secondly:

The situation with Pliant is a little more complex. It is a lot closer to Forth than a P-coded language like VB 3.0 and back, QBasic, or old-style Pascal. It has two kinds of module, both of which it seems you can compile yourself; the low level modules are compiled with an optimizing compiler that will, when it is finished, make them every bit as wicked fast as C. These modules actually become part of the language for future use purposes. (Forth? Anybody else reminded of Forth here? Except you couldn't compile new low-level functions for Forth, and you apparently can for Pliant.) Things at high levels of abstraction are built with these low-level modules, which doesn't cost much in performance because such code usually isn't very optimized anyway. The version 44 site isn't /.ed and has plenty of info on the language's design philosophy.

As I posted elsewhere I find this very interesting, and will be waiting with bated breath for the server to clear. Oh, and FYI it hasn't crashed, though it's very slow. Another monument to the solid design of the Linux kernel, I'd guess.

It appears to also be a programming language. It's pretty interesting, too, as it proclaims to be somewhere between the efficiency of C (which he likens to machine logic) and the ease of use of Lisp (which he likens to human logic). You can find the details at the philosophy section of his site.

They claim they are trying to make you a programmer. This page describes their .page-format, as an alternative to html.

Pity they haven't understood what (proper) html is about. They've gone and created this visual, contextless (or meaningless, if you will) markup-language, which is converted to equally rotten html. They also claim for "dynamic" pages, which, as I see it is a rather poor excuse for limited, and limiting server-side scripting.

From my point of view, they've tried reinvent the wheel as a square. For instance, from theirwebsite

Pliant programs always run in the compiler itself, which compiles on the fly. Thus, a program can ask to compile another piece of code at any time (equivalent to the 'eval' instruction in many interpreters), or free some compiled code (a compile function is a data). All of this gives great flexibility.

Ain't this just a poor way of saying "A Just-in-Time-compiler is about the only thing we'll let you work with"? Just my NKr. 02

They claim they are trying to make you a programmer. This page describes their .page-format, as an alternative to html.

Pity they haven't understood what (proper) html is about. They've gone and created this visual, contextless (or meaningless, if you will) markup-language, which is converted to equally rotten html. They also claim for "dynamic" pages, which, as I see it is a rather poor excuse for limited, and limiting server-side scripting.

From my point of view, they've tried reinvent the wheel as a square. For instance, from theirwebsite

Pliant programs always run in the compiler itself, which compiles on the fly. Thus, a program can ask to compile another piece of code at any time (equivalent to the 'eval' instruction in many interpreters), or free some compiled code (a compile function is a data). All of this gives great flexibility.

Ain't this just a poor way of saying "A Just-in-Time-compiler is about the only thing we'll let you work with"? Just my NKr. 02

Easily. The server (as of writing) has had over 10,000 hits for it's HTTP engine being started today. See the stats for yourself. With 188 max HTTP connections, it is currently at 155 (as of page load). Such a creation serving up all these pages in so little time (thanks to the /. effect) and while the speed is crawling, the server has not crashed. I find this very intresting. I must admit, this is an excellent channel (/.) to publicize any new creation, and thus the imfamous /. effect is self inflicted...

Macx

Looks like it's susceptible to the Slashdot Effect... but this time I wouldn't expect any mirrors.

Since everyone who's trying Pliant is essentially mirroring it (the default site for the http server is the same as their homepage) I wouldn't worry too much ;-).

Actually that is simply release 44, running at pliant.cx; there is really only one official homepage.
Release 53 (the current version) is what Hubert is presenting at the location in the original story.

They are both at pliant.cx.

Actually that is simply release 44, running at pliant.cx; there is really only one official homepage.
Release 53 (the current version) is what Hubert is presenting at the location in the original story.

They are both at pliant.cx.

Here is another offical homepage (it's just not up updated to the last second): http://pliant.cx/

Pliant is a language that seems to have several of the same goals as C#. IMHO, Pliant is the language of the future. It is DFSG Free (GPL).

You can write modules in Pliant that allow for different syntaxes to be used. When enough of these exist, you will be able to choose to most efficient or desired syntax for each particular task of a project. Each part of the project, written in different "languages" will work together seamlessly because they are all the same language: Pliant.

I am, unfortunately, not very knowledgeable so please go to the website and read about it yourselves.