Installing MyDNS-NG & MyDNSConfig On Debian Squeeze

This tutorial is an updated copy from Installing MyDNS-NG & MyDNSConfig 3 On Debian Lenny tutorial.

This tutorial will describe how to install and configure MyDNS-NG and MyDNSConfig 3 on Debian Squeeze. MyDNS-NG (based on MyDNS originally writen by Don Moore - http://mydns.bboy.net/) is a DNS server that uses a MySQL database as backend instead of configuration files. The advantage is that MyDNS simply reads the records from the database, and it does not have to be restarted/reloaded when DNS records change or zones are created/edited/deleted. A secondary nameserver can be easily set up by installing a second instance of MyDNS that accesses the same database or, to be more redundant, uses the MySQL master / slave replication features to replicate the data to the secondary nameserver.

MyDNSConfig is an easy to use web-based interface to MyDNS-NG. MyDNSConfig can create all types of DNS records that are available in MyDNS and adds features like user management and access privileges.

I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you!

1 Preliminary Note

In this tutorial I use the hostname server1.example.com with the IP address 192.168.0.100. These settings might differ for you, so you have to replace them where appropriate.

2 Installing MySQL

We can install MySQL as follows:

aptitude install mysql-client mysql-server

You will be asked the following questions:

New password for the MySQL "root" user: <-- yourrootsqlpassword
Repeat password for the MySQL "root" user: <-- yourrootsqlpassword

3 Installing Apache2, PHP, phpMyAdmin

MyDNSConfig needs a web server with PHP support; therefore I install Apache2. I also install phpMyAdmin so that I can access the database later on over a web interface (although this is optional):

aptitude install apache2 apache2-mpm-prefork imagemagick mcrypt php5 php-auth php5-gd php5-imagick php5-imap php5-mcrypt php5-mysql php-pear phpmyadmin vlogger

You will see the following question:

Web server to reconfigure automatically: <-- apache2

Then run the following command to enable the Apache modules suexec, rewrite, ssl, actions, and include:

a2enmod suexec rewrite ssl actions include

Restart Apache afterwards:

/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

You can now access phpMyAdmin under http://server1.example.com/phpmyadmin/ or http://192.168.0.100/phpmyadmin/.

4 Installing MyDNS

Before we install MyDNS, we need to install a few prerequisites:

aptitude install build-essential libmysqlclient-dev

MyDNS is not available in the Debian Squeeze repositories, therefore we have to build it ourselves as follows:

cd /tmp
wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/mydns-ng/files/mydns/1.2.8.31/mydns-1.2.8.31.tar.gz
tar xfz mydns-1.2.8.31.tar.gz
cd mydns-1.2.8.31/
./configure
make
make install

Next we create the start/stop script for MyDNS:

vi /etc/init.d/mydns

#! /bin/sh
#
# mydns         Start the MyDNS server
#
# Author:       Philipp Kern <phil@philkern.de>.
#               Based upon skeleton 1.9.4 by Miquel van Smoorenburg
#               <miquels@cistron.nl> and Ian Murdock <imurdock@gnu.ai.mit.edu>.
#

set -e

PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
DAEMON=/usr/local/sbin/mydns
NAME=mydns
DESC="DNS server"

SCRIPTNAME=/etc/init.d/$NAME

# Gracefully exit if the package has been removed.
test -x $DAEMON || exit 0

case "$1" in
  start)
        echo -n "Starting $DESC: $NAME"
        start-stop-daemon --start --quiet \
                --exec $DAEMON -- -b
        echo "."
        ;;
  stop)
        echo -n "Stopping $DESC: $NAME"
        start-stop-daemon --stop --oknodo --quiet \
                --exec $DAEMON
        echo "."
        ;;
  reload|force-reload)
        echo -n "Reloading $DESC configuration..."
        start-stop-daemon --stop --signal HUP --quiet \
                --exec $DAEMON
        echo "done."
        ;;
  restart)
        echo -n "Restarting $DESC: $NAME"
        start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo \
                --exec $DAEMON
        sleep 1
        start-stop-daemon --start --quiet \
                --exec $DAEMON -- -b
        echo "."
        ;;
  *)
        echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|restart|reload|force-reload}" >&2
        exit 1
        ;;
esac

exit 0

Then we make the script executable and create the system startup links for it:

chmod +x /etc/init.d/mydns
update-rc.d mydns defaults

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