PowerDNS on Rails

PowerDNS, and PowerDNS on Rails forms a critical part of our infrastructure here at inX, and over the holidays I’ve been busy adding support for macros to PowerDNS on Rails. Macros allow a DNS administrator to setup a predefined sequence of steps that will later be applied to any domain they choose, via the web interface [...]

Yesterday I pushed a slew of changes to the PowerDNS on Rails repo. The sole focus of the work was to extend the authentication system to have temporary authentication tokens. What are authentication tokens? Allow me to explain… Some background ... [More] Almost all applications these days are expected to provide some kind of REST interface, over and above [...] [Less]

An impending doom? Possibly. There was a thread on the Rails Core list not too long ago, titled “Cookie session security and open-source“, and they covered what seems to be an obvious security flaw. I distinctly remember following the events as it happened and thought to myself it makes a lot of sense, and yet [...]

Just as a quick update on the PowerDNS on Rails project, I’ve just pushed several updates to Github that most profoundly includes support for audits. Other smaller changes are also included, including plugin updates (HAML) and upgrading Rails to 2.0.4. As always, these updates have been running in production for a couple of hours already [...]

As part of our current line of improvements on PowerDNS on Rails, we needed to start auditing changes made through the interface to the DNS data. This is a logical step to opening the system up for more API based interaction, and implementing neat features like macros and temporary authentication tokens. Auditing in Rails is not [...]

As part of the PowerDNS on Rails project, and improving our own DNS infrastructure, I sat out today to configure 4 new DNS servers around the world. This will move a lot of our DNS traffic out of South Africa, while keeping some servers locally on the main networks (Internet Solutions & SAIX). I rolled out [...]

After a misrable production implementation of BIND on a MySQL backend, we were forced to re-evaluate our use of PowerDNS, and what happens to the BIND DLZ on Rails project. I’m glad to announce that PowerDNS on Rails will be taking over where BIND DLZ on Rails left off. It’s been a crazy three days of refactoring, [...]

It is with great excitement, and sadness that I announce the tag of BIND DLZ on Rails RC1. We were very motivated as a team to get this product, and the accompanying infrastructure in place so would could continue to enhance and expand our DNS infrastructure. We made two fatal mistakes in trying to achieve this [...]