
------------------------------------------------------------------------
NOV-DNS.DOC -- 19980220 -- Email thread on NetWare & Domain Name Service
------------------------------------------------------------------------

	Feel free to add or edit this document and then email
	it back to faq@jelyon.com




Date: Sun, 8 Feb 1998 11:50:15 -0700
From: Joe Doupnik <JRD@CC.USU.EDU>
Subject: Re: FTP daemon recommendations

>>>The very last product in the known universe that I would
>>>recommend is Novell's FTP "NLM"..."dousing a candle with a
>>>fire hose" comes to mind..."garbage" also does.
>>
>>What's SO BAD about Novell's ftp daemon?  I've installed it a few
>>places and it seems to work.  I'm not doing anything terribly serious
>>with it so it hasn't been pushed very hard.  If there are serious
>>problems with it, I'd like to know what they are.
>
>Well, aside from the bugs and security problems, it requires
>a ton of stuff to be installed.  NWIP is a monster, RAM-wise
>and module-wise.  With the worst DNS product I have ever seen.
>
>Murkworks FTPD.NLM takes some tiny fraction of an MB of RAM.
>One NLM (maybe two, it's been a while) -- load it and go.
>Next to no "interface" complexity, reinitializes in a few
>milliseconds.
>
>The point is that we installed on a separate 200 MB hard drive
>NW server, and then had to bump the RAM to 32MB just to be able
>to run NWIP...some of the "core" modules wouldn't even load!
>Ridiculous.  Like installing all of MS Office to use the clip art.
>
>Floyd Maxwell
-------
	Golly, I wish you hadn't mentioned MS Office 97 ClipArt. It's my
current systems worry...
	For what it's worth and in the interest of tracking the discussion
I brought up DNS service on a INW 4.11 server, via a beta of NFS 2.3 for
INW 4.11. It was easy to do and the memory consumption was very modest,
under 100KB by quick count for managing itself and no other zones. This
is not NW/IP. I am not counting memory consumed by other items such as
NIS (ugh) and NFS etc on my system.
	In regard to existence of PTR records, the Unixcon utility (via
rconsole) created them on the fly, and said as much (creating in-addr.arpa
entries). Displaying the results showed the A records and NS records, etc,
and one can (and should) edit the details while still in Unixcon.
	The problem here seems to be confusion in the program about "domain",
"host" and "zone". These terms are special for DNS work. To set the record
straight, "domain" is a branch of the DNS tree, such as all of novell.com.
A zone, on the other hand, is a subset of a domain and means the region
managed by a DNS server; it is the part of the domain for which the server
is an authority. If a slice of novell.com is delegated to another on-site DNS
server then the zones are smaller than the domain, but taken together equal
the domain. A host is the name of a particular machine and it is one word
(the first, leftmost) in a dotted string Fully Qualified Domain Name; the
domain is all the rest of that string.
	If one compares the process of using Unicon to setup a DNS server
with that of building and installing Bind v4 or v8 plus wading through the
"DNS and BIND" insect book (O'Reilly & Assoc) for a Unix machine then the
Novell version is vastly easier. I have been doing all three over the past
ten days. The Novell version shields one from many gory details, yet I would
be happier dealing with the details (just my opinion, yours may differ).

	On ftpd.nlm's. I've run three flavors here: Novell's for NW 3, for
NW 4, and Brad's (Murkworks Inc). Brad's is slick and recommended. Novell's
have had a long history of difficulties, and as I have remarked the NW 4
rendition is being redesigned and rewritten for Moab. I would not expose
the present NW 4 ftpd.nlm to the world, but I have run the NW 3 flavor
to the world for many many years (netlab2.usu.edu uses it).

	On running a DNS server at all. If one runs a web server on NW
then running a caching-only DNS server on it is recommended. The reason
is web serving is a large sequence of individual connections, one per
piece of a web page, and each connection can result in a DNS lookup of the
IP name to number, and also the reverse (two lookups). Those may have to
travel across the Internet. A caching-only DNS server on the web server has
memory and thus a lookup pair occurs only once and not for every tiny thing.
There is a big improvement in performance, and reduction in Internet traffic,
by creating a local cache of DNS information.
	A caching-only DNS server is one which is responsible for next to
nothing. Make it authorative for only localhost (127.0.0.1), which is in
fact a strictly local item anyway. It will then remember info gathered
from other name servers in the course of resolving IP numbers of callers.
	Joe D.

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

Date: Fri, 20 Feb 1998 11:36:57 +0100
From: Anders Martensson <andersma@HBG.LTH.SE>
Subject: Re: Novell DNS as secondary?

>Hello,  We are not using IWIP but I'd like to setup a secondary DNS
>server for my company.  We are using Bind on an HP/UX machine as the
>primary for our domain.  I have a Novell 4.11 server with very little
>utilization that I'd like to setup with the DNS service. Can anyone give
>me a quick pointer on how I need to go about this.  Zone Transfer,
>db."network" that kind of stuff.  The NetWare DNS leaves me alittle
>confused as far as setting it up for secondary.  Any info is would be
>great.

Go to UNICON and choose Manage Services -> DNS -> Administer DNS
-> Manage Replica Databases.

Then press INSERT and write the name of the domain you wish it to be
secondary for, and then enter an authorative nameserver.

As far as I have configured my system here (and understood it) this
should create a secondary nameserver.

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

