Re: [Ganymede Help] dns2xml and xml2dns scripts

[Jonathan Abbey <jonabbey@arlut.utexas.edu>]

Prabhakar, we don't have DNS support in the userKit, at all.  We do
have the DNS support code that we use packaged with the Ganymede
distribution, in src/schemas/gasharl, but that code has not been
cleaned up or documented well enough for others to be able to use it
without some significant engineering work.

We have done a significant amount of work towards producing a flexible
DNS management system, and the dns2xml and xml2dns scripts are a big
part of that system.  You can download those pieces from
ftp://ftp.arlut.utexas.edu/pub/ganymede/gany_dns.tar.gz.

The dns2xml script can convert a bunch of BIND zone files into an xml
object graph of networks, systems, and interfaces, suitable for
management by Ganymede's object database.  The xml2dns script can
convert such an xml object graph back into BIND zone files.

What's missing is the Ganymede schema definition to define the
Network, Domain, System, and Interface objects, the plug-in Java code
for managing such objects, the builder task to write out the XML file
for xml2dns to operate on, and the logic to massage the output of the
dns2xml script into a form that is directly loadable by Ganymede.

The fact is, if you are interested in working on a fancy concurrent
DNS management tool, there are a lot of pieces already completed, but
there are several big pieces which have not been done, and we at ARL
are not working on the remaining pieces at this time.

There is a team at Villanova University that has been trying to
assemble a DNS management utility out of Ganymede, but I believe that
they decided to ignore the tools we had written in order to take a
more resource record-oriented approach to the problem.  I don't think
they have anything nearly well finished enough to present to the world
yet.

If you look over the Ganymede FAQ and at the Ganymede discussion
list's archives, you'll see a bunch of discussion over the last couple
of years about DNS and Ganymede, and you may get from that a better
idea of the scope of the task that would be involved to work on a
'dnsKit' for Ganymede.

 Jon

| Hello Sir or Madam,
| 
| I installed ganymede on our server - solaris8. I used the userkit
| schema.
| 
| I uploaded our NIS - passwd file also.
| 
| Now, I am trying to upload the DNS and I guess I need dns2xml
| script,right?
| 
| I couldnot find where I can download this script from.
| 
| Can you please guide me.
| 
| Thank you very much
| 
| -PV
| 312-601-3045

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jonathan Abbey 				              jonabbey@arlut.utexas.edu
Applied Research Laboratories                 The University of Texas at Austin
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX     http://www.arlut.utexas.edu/gash2

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
To make changes to your subscription to the Ganymede Help list, send
mail to majordomo@arlut.utexas.edu.

To unsubcribe, include the line

unsubscribe ganymede-help

in the body of your mail message

Visit the Ganymede web page at http://www.arlut.utexas.edu/gash2

----------------------------------------------------------------------------