MyDNS + MyDNSConfig software appliance

[michaelkjohnson]

I used rBuilder Online (http://www.rpath.org/rbuilder/) to make it easier to get MyDNS and MyDNSConfig set up and working together "out of the box". I call my project lochDNS (http://www.rpath.org/rbuilder/project/lochdns), and I invite others to join the project and improve it.

lochDNS is available as software appliances (http://www.rpath.org/rbuilder/project/lochdns/releases) and as a system installer ISO image. The virtual filesystem image and tarball image work as Xen domU instances. The virtual hard drive image works with qemu and parallels. Hard drive, VMWare (Player and ESX), VHD (Microsoft and Virtual Iron), and anaconda-based installer images that can install on hardware or on fully-virtualized systems are all available. A public AMI is available for immediate use for all EC2 users. LochDNS is available both for 32-bit and 64-bit systems.

If you use lochDNS, feel free to leave a comment here. Thanks!

[falko]

That sounds interesting. :)

[till]

It will be nice to have some easy installable images from MyDNSConfig.

[michaelkjohnson]

OK, since till is interested, I created installable ISO images.

The one limitation I know about right now is that the firewall settings in the installer do not actually get applied to the system, due to missing software in the image; right now, you have to write your own iptables rules if you care about having a firewall. It isn't really that important, though, since the only services running on the system are essential services that are part of the point of running the server.

Please post feedback in this thread! Thanks!

[michaelkjohnson]

I have released a new version (http://www.rpath.org/rbuilder/project/lochdns/release?id=4936) of lochDNS (http://lochdns.rpath.org/) . This update includes firewall configuration tools, rPath Appliance Agent (http://wiki.rpath.com/wiki/rPath_Appliance_Agent) for web-based system configuration and automated updates, and base operating system updates since the last release.

Please post to this thread if you use lochDNS and are interested in seeing continuing updates to lochDNS. Thanks!

[michaelkjohnson]

lochDNS 0.7 (http://www.rpath.org/rbuilder/project/lochdns/release?id=5161) is released. lochDNS now includes Xen images, available both as a filesystem image (suitable for using with blktap or loopback mounting) and as a tarball image that you can deploy into any Xen domU instance. Of course, the existing VMware, QEMU, Parallels, and anaconda system installation options are still available.

I have modified how the rPath Appliance Agent is presented; it now uses a separate web server instance (lighttpd) so that udpates to the apache web server do not halt updates.

For information on making use of the domU images, take a look at Xen Solutions Using rPath Technologies (http://wiki.rpath.com/wiki/Xen_Solutions_Using_rPath_Technologies) in the rPath wiki.

[voipfc]

Are these DomU easily transferable to a Xen VPS provider? Can they be bundled in such a way that a Xen provider can easily load them.



lochDNS 0.7 (http://www.rpath.org/rbuilder/project/lochdns/release?id=5161) is released. lochDNS now includes Xen images, available both as a filesystem image (suitable for using with blktap or loopback mounting) and as a tarball image that you can deploy into any Xen domU instance. Of course, the existing VMware, QEMU, Parallels, and anaconda system installation options are still available.

I have modified how the rPath Appliance Agent is presented; it now uses a separate web server instance (lighttpd) so that udpates to the apache web server do not halt updates.

For information on making use of the domU images, take a look at Xen Solutions Using rPath Technologies (http://wiki.rpath.com/wiki/Xen_Solutions_Using_rPath_Technologies) in the rPath wiki.

[michaelkjohnson]

Are these DomU easily transferable to a Xen VPS provider? Can they be bundled in such a way that a Xen provider can easily load them.

Yes. Different Xen VPS providers have different preferences for deploying images; the filesystem image is very easy to use for Xen VPS providers willing to take it, and the tarball can be turned into almost any image type they require from you. Some may be willing to take the tarball image itself and unpack it in your domU to initialize the domU for you.

[voipfc]

After reading about your appliance I went to the rBuilder website to see how it works. The documentation or forums there is rather sparse, or I am probably not looking in the right place.

Is there some place there where I can acquire more help?

[michaelkjohnson]

After reading about your appliance I went to the rBuilder website to see how it works. The documentation or forums there is rather sparse, or I am probably not looking in the right place.

Is there some place there where I can acquire more help?

Yes. The central location for information on rPath technologies is the rPath wiki (http://wiki.rpath.com/), and there is whole section devoted to rBuilder. (http://wiki.rpath.com/wiki/rBuilder) When the documentation is incomplete from your perspective, we want to know about it. You can ask questions in real time on the #conary IRC channel on the freenode IRC network (http://freenode.net/) to get quick responses. We consider bugs in documentation to be real bugs, and you can file those bugs in our Jira issue tracking system. (https://issues.rpath.com/) Thanks for asking!

[voipfc]

Is it configured for logging in via SSH? I tried running an image I built using rBuilder online and I couldn't get it to run. The instance came up but SSH port did not respond.

I searched the filesystem for ssh and couldn't find out. I think I have to get to rBuilder to dig deeper on setting SSH start at runtime


Yes. The central location for information on rPath technologies is the rPath wiki (http://wiki.rpath.com/), and there is whole section devoted to rBuilder. (http://wiki.rpath.com/wiki/rBuilder) When the documentation is incomplete from your perspective, we want to know about it. You can ask questions in real time on the #conary IRC channel on the freenode IRC network (http://freenode.net/) to get quick responses. We consider bugs in documentation to be real bugs, and you can file those bugs in our Jira issue tracking system. (https://issues.rpath.com/) Thanks for asking!

[voipfc]

I have just managed to add ssh to a package and modified it to login on EC2. Is it possible to make a copy , cook it and build it? I am joining the lochDNS group anyway, and see what I can do from there.

Great idea.

voipfc

Is it configured for logging in via SSH? I tried running an image I built using rBuilder online and I couldn't get it to run. The instance came up but SSH port did not respond.

I searched the filesystem for ssh and couldn't find out. I think I have to get to rBuilder to dig deeper on setting SSH start at runtime

[michaelkjohnson]

Is it configured for logging in via SSH?

No, I didn't include ssh because lochDNS was intended to provide the web interface without requiring a console login. The images do not include a root password (of course), so no network access is exposed that would be compromised by an unset root password. The idea is that if you have console access, you should set the root password after booting the image. And since the root password is empty, ssh wouldn't let you in anyway without setting a password.

However, you raise a good chicken-and-egg question; if you are deploying an image with a VPS provider, you don't have a good way of getting sshd running.

For future builds, I have added openssh-server and enabled the rAA plugin for setting the root password. After you set the root password for the instance, you will be able to ssh in. Updating a current installation of lochDNS will make this work, and that is something you can do without console access; you just need access to port 8003 for rAA, which you'll need for this anyway in order to set up the root password so that ssh can work.

Good point, and thanks for asking. Oh, and welcome to the lochDNS project!

[voipfc]

If package is released tar format with openssh added, login can be possible by copying a public key into root's .ssh folder and recreating the disk image. That way once the ssh server is started only the person with the private key can login.
That's how I set up a trial rpath package to launch on EC2.

No, I didn't include ssh because lochDNS was intended to provide the web interface without requiring a console login. The images do not include a root password (of course), so no network access is exposed that would be compromised by an unset root password. The idea is that if you have console access, you should set the root password after booting the image. And since the root password is empty, ssh wouldn't let you in anyway without setting a password.

However, you raise a good chicken-and-egg question; if you are deploying an image with a VPS provider, you don't have a good way of getting sshd running.

For future builds, I'll add openssh-server and enable the rAA plugin for setting the root password. Then, after you set the root password for the instance, you will be able to ssh in.

Good point, and thanks for asking. Oh, and welcome to the lochDNS project!

Thanks

[michaelkjohnson]

lochDNS 0.9 has all the latest system software updates, adds a VHD image to the published image types, and includes the latest rPath Appliance Agent (rAA) (http://wiki.rpath.com/wiki/rPath_Appliance_Agent) which provides a backup/restore system (http://wiki.rpath.com/wiki/rBuilder:rBA_Administration_Guide/Backup_and_Restore) that can be used either in an automated or manual fashion. Backups will not be done until you configure them explicitly in the rAA console. The backups are conveniently small; about 100KB plus whatever data you have in the MySQL database. The backup provides just enough data to restore to a previous snaphot of the data (not the system software version) or to do a new installation and then restore the backup on it to return to the data available at the time of the backup.

Current users can update manually through the rAA console. If you have scheduled updates, your system will be updated to 0.9 during the next scheduled update. After the update, all the new features of rAA will be available to you.

Enjoy!

[FredZ]

I thought this was going to be something that would suit my technical ineptitude, thwated again. I downloaded the CD iso, burned it, went to install it, I get the splash screen, I press enter, and my pc reboots. I have had this with rPath before. For me rpath sux, and this was my final look at anything built on it. Sorry this is negative and I don't wish to detract from the fine effort made to create an appliance (something I am in favour of), but I thought I would just say that rpath seems to have some compatability issues with older equipment.
FYI: equipment was an old K6-2 350 with 128Mb ram on an MS-5187 (yes I am aware that this is not a server board). This was being used as a server and was retired and is now just a test unit for such things as this. Production units are Blade servers with dual CPUs and 16Gb ram.

Regards

Fred

[michaelkjohnson]

I thought this was going to be something that would suit my technical ineptitude, thwated again. I downloaded the CD iso, burned it, went to install it, I get the splash screen, I press enter, and my pc reboots. I have had this with rPath before...

FYI: equipment was an old K6-2 350 with 128Mb ram on an MS-5187...


All rPath-based appliances that use rPath's standard kernels require an i686-class CPU. The K6-2 is, despite the name, a 586-class CPU.

I'm sorry this bothers you; rPath chose to optimize for making better use of hardware that has been in general production in the past decade rather than much older hardware. For testing, rPath suggests virtualization, and appliances are available for most virtual "form factors".

[michaelkjohnson]

If package is released tar format with openssh added, login can be possible by copying a public key into root's .ssh folder and recreating the disk image. That way once the ssh server is started only the person with the private key can login.
That's how I set up a trial rpath package to launch on EC2.


The next release of lochDNS will include the amiconfig package, which will enable you to easily deploy AMIs in EC2, providing EC2 standard key information to a booting AMIs -- you can even share images. See rBuilder:Amazon_Elastic_Compute_Cloud (http://wiki.rpath.com/wiki/rBuilder:Amazon_Elastic_Compute_Cloud) for more information on how to boot rPath Xen images in the EC2 cloud.

[michaelkjohnson]

lochDNS has been updated to the recently-released MyDNSConfig 1.1.0 release.

lochDNS 0.10 has all the latest system software updates, and adds public Amazon EC2 AMI (AMI ID ami-f1806598), VMware ESX, and Virtual Iron VHD images.

Current users can update manually through the rAA console. If you have scheduled updates, your system will automatically be updated to 0.10 during the next scheduled update.

Enjoy!

[SyberWizard]

I have used the latest .10 version of the installation. I have web access to the "path appliance platform." I have completed all of the configuration steps, to include creating an additional user. Nowhere however, do I see anything for accessing MyDNS or MyDNSConfig in order to actually use the interface. Please tell me what I am missing.:confused:

[michaelkjohnson]

...Nowhere however, do I see anything for accessing MyDNS or MyDNSConfig in order to actually use the interface.

The main page for the system is a "landing page" that links to two URLs: the rPath Appliance Platform web management console, and the MyDNSConfig interface. Assuming that your system is called "ns.example.com", point your browser at "http://ns.example.com/" and you'll see both links.

[SyberWizard]

Thanks, that did it.:) It appears that port 80 does not work at all until after completing the rAA setup. It never occurred to me to go back and check it after setup!

So, from the observations of a novice. There should be some guidance that:

need to turn off the firewall, as there is no selection for allowing DNS communications, OR add DNS ports to the firewall (better solution).

need to install the Everything selection in order to get MyDNS loaded. Can Everything be set as the default selection?

It would be great if that last screen mentioned that, in order to access the rAA setup, one must use port 8003/8004, and after completing setup, go back to the standard port 80.

My final question, and I do not know if this is an issue with LochDNS or MyDNS, but DNS Report complains that this server does not respond on TCP, only UDP. How do I correct this?

[falko]

My final question, and I do not know if this is an issue with LochDNS or MyDNS, but DNS Report complains that this server does not respond on TCP, only UDP. How do I correct this?
Open /etc/mydns.conf and set
allow-tcp = yes
Then restart MyDNS.

[michaelkjohnson]

Thanks, that did it.:) It appears that port 80 does not work at all until after completing the rAA setup. It never occurred to me to go back and check it after setup!

I've never seen it not work at install time, but I do tend to use the virtual images rather than the anaconda image for testing point updates, and it's quite possible that I've just not noticed. I wonder if this had to do with the firewall, though?

So, from the observations of a novice. There should be some guidance that:

need to turn off the firewall, as there is no selection for allowing DNS communications, OR add DNS ports to the firewall (better solution).

need to install the Everything selection in order to get MyDNS loaded. Can Everything be set as the default selection?

It would be great if that last screen mentioned that, in order to access the rAA setup, one must use port 8003/8004, and after completing setup, go back to the standard port 80.

I can tweak the firewall configuration for future releases.

I should simply disable the package selection screen so that all necessary software is always installed.

rAA should be modified to link to the MyDNSConfig console. You shouldn't need to go to rAA first; the landing page should be accessible as soon as you install, and it should point both to rAA and to MyDNSConfig.

Thanks for your detailed and useful response, and glad to hear that the system is working for you now (assuming falko's advice about allow-tcp = yes has resolved the other issue you encountered).

[SyberWizard]

Yes, it is now responding to TCP DNS requests, so that is working. Today I am working on the second DNS server, so I get to play with that functionality. I love it when progress is being made!:)

[michaelkjohnson]

Just a note for anyone worried about the security of their lochDNS systems due to security issues exposed during the "month of PHP bugs" -- as of last night, all updated lochDNS systems will include a new version of PHP that has been patched for the relevant security issues.

[z00te]

Hi,

i'm new to mydns, so looking the faq i found this answer to my problem:

http://mydns.bboy.net/faq/#9
-----
How do I use MyDNS but still allow external (recursive) lookups, like for "www.google.com"?
To do this you need to use a program that does recursive DNS lookups. I recommend dnscache.
----

the only solution is to install dnsccahe on the appliance?
other way to resolve non-local domain names?

tnx
z

[till]

The recommended way is to use a DNS cachcing program. e.g. dnsmasq as described in this howto:

http://www.howtoforge.com/mydns_mydnsconfig_dnsmasp_on_ubuntu_edgy

[z00te]

Tnx for the link and the hint,

i have installed as the tutorial (well, adapting to rpath linux and using conary to install dnsmasq 2.38), and all seems to work from the virtual machine.
But from the others pc on the lan it seems that the caching function doesn't work; using dig to test the query time it seem too high.
No problem at all with the forward. Any idea on why the cache only works from the localhost... i've tried lot of config but no luck...

tnx
.z

[michaelkjohnson]

(well, adapting to rpath linux and using conary to install dnsmasq 2.38)

I want to be clear for other readers of this thread that dnsmasq is available for installation in lochDNS by running the command "conary update dnsmasq".

But from the others pc on the lan it seems that the caching function doesn't work; using dig to test the query time it seem too high.
No problem at all with the forward. Any idea on why the cache only works from the localhost...

dnsmasq has a lot of configuration options, as you've discovered. I assume that you have tried increasing the cache size. The dnsmasq that I assume you have installed (from contrib.rpath.org@rpl:1) is set up primarily to integrate with dhcpcd as a local redirecting cache for laptop systems that are booted in different contexts at different times, and might have some subdomains that should be sought sometimes via ethernet and sometimes via VPN. In particular, the /etc/dnsmasq.conf file it includes contains the line "resolv-file=/etc/resolv.conf.static" which you probably want to comment out if you haven't already.

[voipfc]

How much RAM can lochDNS get by with?
I expect to use it only on at most 100 domains.
Given that for the most part it will be doing lookups on a small database shouldn't 48 or 64Mb be enough?

I can probably run the web interface elsewhere to minimize the memory requirements for that aspect.

[voipfc]

I am using mydnsconfig and I noticed that after adding the root domain itself ie.
domain.co.uk by leaving the Name edit box blank it can't be edited any more, as there is nothing to click on.

Is there a way to enter something in the B]Name[/B] edit box that will allow it to be edited?

A work around though will be to delete it and add it again with the new details, but that is not ideal.

[michaelkjohnson]

How much RAM can lochDNS get by with?
I expect to use it only on at most 100 domains.
Given that for the most part it will be doing lookups on a small database shouldn't 48 or 64Mb be enough?

The memory requirements are unlikely to scale significantly with domains. The web console (what we used to call rPath Appliance Agent, but now call rPath Appliance Platform Agent) currently consumes about 30MB of memory, though much of that does not get used actively. (We at rPat are working on a project to reduce that; much of its memory use comes from using turbogears, which itself imports code that the agent never needs to use.)

The virtual images include a 128MB swap file. You can use the "free" command to determine how much memory is used, and watch the output of "dstat 10" (the "10" is arbitrary and tells how many seconds at a time to look at) and see if the system is swapping under normal use. You can generally ignore "so" (swap out) events, but if you are getting many "si" (swap in) events then you need more memory assigned to the image. I've been running my images with 128MB of RAM; that's probably more than they need.

I can probably run the web interface elsewhere to minimize the memory requirements for that aspect.

The web server doesn't really use that much memory. mysqld and the appliance agent are the main memory users. mysqld is unlikely to change in this respect (probably 18-20MB in light use) but the appliance agent will become lighter.

I have not done anything to try to reduce memory usage by apache httpd. You can certainly follow tuning guides (ask google...) for your situation.

I hope that helps.

[jordan]

It will be nice to have some easy installable images from MyDNSConfig.

[michaelkjohnson]

Key updates:

Filesystem should no longer fill up with logfiles, because I have added cron to the images. My test rig involved lots of backing up and restoring and so didn't show this problem caused by cron not being included in the images. Sorry to everyone who was inconvenienced, and thanks to the user who reported the issue.
VMWare images will have the open-source open-vm-tools installed.
New version of the rAPA console with all current updates and fixes.
Many more debugging and information packages have been added (things like dmidecode, ethtool, libusb, net-snmp).
LochDNS instances can now mount iSCSI storage for easy extensibility.
All applicable security updates have been applied.


As usual, make sure that you have enabled backups. They are small, cheap, and easy. Also, they work! Also as usual, do a backup before the update. The fact that I haven't seen errors in my test rig doesn't mean that there are no bugs...

This is a large update involving a large part of the system. Expect it to take several minutes, even on systems with fast network connections.

Reboot your LochDNS instance(s) after upgrading. To do that, go the Schedule Reboot option and choose Reboot Now in the web console, or shutdown -r now at the command line. The "restart" that is performed automatically after the update is the web console only, it is not a reboot.

I am also pleased to announce that 64-bit images are now released for vmware, xen, and system installation. (mydns was clearly not written with 64-bit systems in mind, but I made it compile...) You can download 32-bit and 64-bit images from the LochDNS project in rBuilder Online (http://www.rpath.org/rbuilder/project/lochdns/)

If you have an existing image that has run out of disk space, the workaround is to log in as root at a text console, and run the following three commands:

/etc/cron.daily/logrotate
rm -f /var/log/raa/*.1
shutdown -r now

The reboot is the easiest way to make sure that all services are running correctly that might be malfunctioning after running out of space.

[brifish]

Sorry, this is more of a support question for your rpath image. I wanted to sample the concept and give the LochDNS appliance a test run. I've loaded the image and I am able to get to the configuration login webpage. However, I don't know what the login credentials should be. root doesn't work and I don't remember setting any other pwd's on the install. I've checked what documentation that I could find and there is no reference to the default login credentials. I'm able to login via the console as root, but just can't get logged into the web client. Any help? thanks - Brian

[michaelkjohnson]

Sorry, this is more of a support question for your rpath image.

No problem! Glad to help.

I've loaded the image and I am able to get to the configuration login webpage. However, I don't know what the login credentials should be.

If you go to the appliance (http://ip-or-dns-address.of.your.appliance/) you'll see that it lists the default passwords and recommends that you change them at first login.

There are two separate logins: one for configuring the appliance software, and one for MyDNS itself.

For configuring MyDNS itself, the default username and password are "admin" and "admin".

For configuring the appliance, the defaults are "admin" and "password".

Again, those two "admin" accounts are unrelated -- I didn't try to modify the appliance web console software to intermingle with MyDNS configuration, or modify MyDNS to require you to set up an appliance configuration, in order to make it easier to keep both sets of software up to date. For the same reason, I'm not intending to add that either. They are really separate concepts, anyway. By way of analogy, in a blog hosting appliance, you wouldn't want everyone who had a blogging account to also have an idempotent account in the system management console. :)

Hope that helps!

[brifish]

Thank you, yes that did help. Actually, I would have found this by going to the main website - but, on the anaconda (text-based) install, I didn't click on the "All" choice for packages. I just clicked the box for the rpath appliance. It was confusing because the https:// site came up, but the normal http:// site was not responding.

After reading through the blogs a bit more, I re-did the install with the "All" checked and now I can get to both sites and I can see the notes that you made on the appliance web homepage.

Thank you.

-Brian

[michaelkjohnson]

Thank you, yes that did help. Actually, I would have found this by going to the main website - but, on the anaconda (text-based) install, I didn't click on the "All" choice for packages.

Ah! In graphical mode, package selection is disabled. In some future release, the installer technology will change to be very much faster and package selection will not be available in any part of the interface. No schedule for that yet.

Glad it's working for you now!

[michaelkjohnson]

No schedule for that yet.

I haven't had a lot of time to work on lochDNS updates since I wrote that (if anyone wants to join the development team, tell me about yourself...) but I have recently completed a refresh of the underlying platform. Please welcome lochDNS 2.0 (http://www.rpath.org/rbuilder/project/lochdns/release?id=6161) -- I intend to migrate lochDNS 0.12 users (I never did make a 1.0 release...) to lochDNS 2 in the near future.

As always, I recommend doing a backup before major updates; backups are cheap, fast, small, and easy because they contain only the potentially unique data, not the programs. About 100K plus the compressed mysql database dump.

This release has the much faster installation process (on bare hardware or in a fully-virtualized virtual machine) that does not allow package selection at all; any additional packages will have to be added after the installation and the system told to keep them according to the instructions at Appliance:LochDNS (http://wiki.rpath.com/wiki/Appliance:LochDNS)

In the "eyecandy" department, this release has a splash screen while booting and shutting down (amazing!) and the web console for system administration (rPath Appliance Platform Agent (http://wiki.rpath.com/wiki/rPath_Appliance_Platform_Agent)) has a significantly improved user interface. (There are, unfortunately, a few javascript incompatibilities with firefox 3 that haven't yet been fixed; primarily, after submitting a change, you have to reload the page to get to the next step. Sorry for the inconvenience; this will be fixed in an upcoming release.)

More interesting (to me, anyway): the underlying platform has been significantly improved. Not only have the versions of practically all the elements of the underlying platform been updated, but they have also been built with additional security measures in place. The images include more utilities and diagnostic tools that were not included in the earlier version, but because the individual elements of the platform are smaller, the overall size of the images has not changed much. The functionality per byte ratio has improved. :)

So download the new version and test it, and report success or failure.

[michaelkjohnson]

So far, there have been several hundred downloads of lochDNS 2.0, and zero complaints, and I haven't seen problems in testing. To update your older lochDNS 0.12 system to lochDNS 2.0, there are three steps.

Back up your system using the rAPA console. Make sure you have a copy of the backup archive before proceeding. I haven't seen a failure yet, but you might be the first!
Log in on the console or via ssh as root (if you have enabled ssh by setting a root password for the system), and run the following commands:
service mysqld stop
conary migrate group-lochdns=lochdns.rpath.org@lochdns:2 --interactive
After running that command, you will need to answer Y so that the update will be done. The update will take a while because it is a complete update of the underlying operating system, not just a few components.
After the update completes, please reboot the system.


You should now have a working lochDNS 2.0 system.

[lukasware]

# x86 VMware (R) ESX Server Virtual Appliance: VMware (R) ESX Image
# x86 VMware (R) ESX Server Virtual Appliance: VMware (R) ESX Image

What's the difference between these two downloads listed on the
download page? one is download ID 27997 and the other is 27998.

also when installing the X86-64 iso under ESX, it fails with:
This kernel requires an X86-64 CPU, but only detected an i686 CPU

Of course, my ESX installs other 64bit guests...including the 64 bit version of ESX...

[michaelkjohnson]

What's the difference between these two downloads listed on the
download page? one is download ID 27997 and the other is 27998.


Thanks for the bug report. In the process of defining all 20 (!) image types, I managed to accidentally define the 64-bit ESX image to have 32-bit contents. My mistake. I'll generate new images shortly.

I should be clear that I test only a small sample of the 20 images -- I build them all for user convenience, but if I waited to release until I had found time to test them all, I'd never get around to releasing updates. :p


also when installing the X86-64 iso under ESX, it fails with:
This kernel requires an X86-64 CPU, but only detected an i686 CPU

At first glance, this sounds to me like a mistake setting up the instance under ESX. I have reproduced this so far only by setting up a 32-bit emulated system and attempting to run the 64-bit image on it.

That said, once I get past that particular problem while testing those images, I ran into another problem: the ISO images won't install. I didn't realize that I hadn't tested ISO images since changing the way I generated them. I'll fix that too while generating the new images.

I'll post here when the images are ready, and thanks again for the bug report!

Update: see below for LochDNS 2.0.1 images with these fixes, and thanks again!

[michaelkjohnson]

All the updates to lochDNS 2.0 have now been made available as a new image set: LochDNS 2.0.1 (http://www.rpath.org/rbuilder/project/lochdns/release?id=6167). If you have already installed, all you need to do is update, you do not need to re-install.

Changes include a newer kernel version, latest open-vm-tools in vmware images, the 64-bit ESX image has been re-added (in 2.0, I accidentally built two 32-bit ESX images instead of one 32-bit and one 64-bit image), and the ISO images will now install correctly.

Further bug reports encouraged and appreciated!

[michaelkjohnson]

All the updates to lochDNS 2.0 have now been made available as a new image set: LochDNS 2.0.2 (http://www.rpath.org/project/lochdns/release?id=6278). If you have already installed, all you need to do is update, you do not need to re-install.

rPath Platform Agent is updated to 3.1.0, and includes a text-mode console for setting up networking (useful particularly if DHCP is not available). The text-mode console displays automatically on virtual console 1; normal shell login is still available on virtual consoles 2-6. All current and relevant rPath Linux security and bugfix updates have been applied.

Also, the lochDNS documentation (http://wiki.rpath.com/wiki/Appliance:LochDNS) has been updated with information on setting up your lochDNS system. As always, there is not very much to it. It's pretty much download-and-go, and the system guides you through the few required steps at the start. It's now just a bit easier if you have installed without working DHCP, thanks to the text-mode network setup.

[PivCon]

I just wanted to drop a note and say that I have found the LochDNS appliance to be a nice product. It is small, easy to setup, and is a great contribution.

I have one question about v2.0.2. Perhaps I am missing something, but it doesn't appear that scp works. The scp binary is on the system, but there is no ssh binary which the scp program looks for when using scp to copy to a remote system.

This works: scp file.exe dest.exer

This does not: scp file.exe user@hostname:/tmp (prints error saying it can't find ssh.


Finally, a request for a feature in future additions would be to have a configuration screen to simply MySQL replication of the MyDNS database so that when somebody wants to run two of these, replicated, it is easier to do then manually doing it. Even if it just made the process a little less cumbersome by having the slave user already in the mysql database, having a way to quickly edit the my.cfg file for master or slave mode, and having a web interface to get the mysql dump from the master and import to the slave for the initial replication setup.

This would be a great addition. I did it manually on two LochDNS VM's and it works great.

[michaelkjohnson]

I just wanted to drop a note and say that I have found the LochDNS appliance to be a nice product. It is small, easy to setup, and is a great contribution.


Thanks! Glad to hear it!


...
This does not: scp file.exe user@hostname:/tmp (prints error saying it can't find ssh.


That's because I never added the openssh-client runtime, because I didn't think it would be useful -- I thought people would ssh/scp into it, but not out of it.

It's a small addition, and the next build of LochDNS will have ssh in it as well.


Finally, a request for a feature in future additions would be to have a configuration screen to simply MySQL replication of the MyDNS database so that when somebody wants to run two of these, replicated, it is easier to do then manually doing it. Even if it just made the process a little less cumbersome by having the slave user already in the mysql database, having a way to quickly edit the my.cfg file for master or slave mode, and having a web interface to get the mysql dump from the master and import to the slave for the initial replication setup.

This would be a great addition. I did it manually on two LochDNS VM's and it works great.

I've never set this up, and I cheerfully admit to having no idea how to do it. (Update: OK, I found http://www.howtoforge.com/mysql_database_replication now. The next release of lochDNS will include /etc/my.cnf in backups so that replication information there is preserved.) Also, if you look at the ugly main page with the two lines leading you to the administrative and mydns logins, it will become apparent that I'm an OS guy, not a web designer. :)

It probably wouldn't be that hard to add a plugin to the agent for doing this. Want to work on it?

[tom2501]

After importing LochDns into my esx i run it, changed the default password, started network configuration, put all the IPs in, and after hitting Save i get:
"Error: <ProtocolError for admin:******@localhost:8004/xmlrpc/:500 Internal Server Error>

thanks for any help
Tom

[michaelkjohnson]

After importing LochDns into my esx i run it, changed the default password, started network configuration, put all the IPs in, and after hitting Save i get:
"Error: <ProtocolError for admin:******@localhost:8004/xmlrpc/:500 Internal Server Error>


Was this in the initial text-mode UI?

If you log out and log back in, does the error clear?

Can you log in as root on another virtual terminal (alt-f2)?

If so, can you please get the contents of /var/log/raa/* and attach them to an issue in the rPath issue tracking system at https://issues.rpath.com/ in the "Platform Agent" product? (Please check to make sure that they do not expose your passwords first -- if there's a bug, a traceback might include a password, so search for your password and replace it with something like XXXX before posting it.)

My first guess is that the bug starts with a typo in an IP address or something like that, but I could be completely wrong...

[tom2501]

Was this in the initial text-mode UI?

Yes


If you log out and log back in, does the error clear?


No


Can you log in as root on another virtual terminal (alt-f2)?

Yes


If so, can you please get the contents of /var/log/raa/* and attach them to an issue in the rPath issue tracking system at https://issues.rpath.com/ in the "Platform Agent" product? (Please check to make sure that they do not expose your passwords first -- if there's a bug, a traceback might include a password, so search for your password and replace it with something like XXXX before posting it.)

My first guess is that the bug starts with a typo in an IP address or something like that, but I could be completely wrong...

The error was caused by unreachable gateway. I've put that VM in isolated network, cause i wanted to configure it first. When i put it in my server VLAN it went smoothly.

So i think the case is closed.

[michaelkjohnson]

The error was caused by unreachable gateway. I've put that VM in isolated network, cause i wanted to configure it first. When i put it in my server VLAN it went smoothly.

So i think the case is closed.

Thanks for investigating. I'm glad that the issue is not blocking deployment -- but it still sounds like a bug, so I have opened an issue report RAA-1696 (https://issues.rpath.com/browse/RAA-1696) in the rPath issue tracking system.

[preterition]

After 3+ years, There is an UPDATE! WHooo hoooo. I'm excited can you tell.

04/07/2009

MyDNSConfig 3.0.1 released

This is a totally new MyDNSConfig package with a new theme. It supports features introduced with MyDNS-NG and fixes several bugs. [Download] (http://downloads.sourceforge.net/mydnsconfig/MyDNSConfig-3.0.1.tar.gz?use_mirror=) [Release Notes] (http://www.mydnsconfig.org/release_notes/release_notes_3.0.1.txt)



01/02/2006

MyDNSConfig 1.1.0 released

This MyDNSConfig release fixes several bugs in the Authentication system and adds a new interface theme.