By: Paul Kelly

Paul Kelly — Thu, 23 Nov 2017 18:10:48 +0000

Bind is a very flexible and powerful DNS server, for people who like dealing with the complexity. The many steps that this tutorial includes indicates to me that the vast majority of people who are even thinking about hosting a private DNS like me, should not even think about using it. It’s a program that started out simple in the early days of UNIX, but due to modern demands has grown in power and complexity far beyond reasonable bounds of usability. Nothing should require that many files to edit, first to install, and second to add or remove hosts. This is completely ridiculous in this decade and going forward.

I used it for many years, and most times it updated, it stopped working and I had to spend the time to figure out why it broke and fix it. The sixth or seventh time that happened I went searching for an alternative that was easier to manage. All I want is a pair of DNS servers that manage my local domain (home). The easiest by far is DNSMASQ. Your slightly above average 10 year old can manage DNSMASQ. Easily. To add a host you edit /etc/hosts. To remove a host you edit /etc/hosts. Duh…. It works after you install it, comes standard in Ubuntu. Duh…

No, it doesn’t replicate, I simply edit /etc/hosts on both of them when I add something. Less than a minute.
This is a cool and well written article/tutorial, but why is such a tutorial even necessary anymore? For us time-crunched stressed out end users bind has outlived it’s usefullness until it get’s an easy to use GUI. Even then I suspect it will be much more difficult to use than DNSMASQ.

Comments on: How to Set Up Private DNS Servers with BIND on Ubuntu 16.04

By: Paul Kelly