iDNS and DNS Enabler - anyone know anytihng about these?

[jc1350]

I have configured BIND on my Mac Leopard desktop for my home LAN. All is working fine, but I'm starting to get lazy. So, I've been looking for a GUI.

So far I found only 2 that are not priced for the "enterprise" customer. One is about $35US (iDNS) and the other is $15US (DNS Enabler).

The "problem" with DNS Enabler is that it uses its own files instead of /etc/named.conf and /var/named. It's a problem because I don't feel like re-creating everything.

I don't know if iDNS does that or if it uses the standard files. I think it uses the standard files based on the clues like "it's just like Server Administrator, but for the 'regular' version of Mac OS."

I have sent messages to both developers asking for details.

But, my primary question here is has anyone used them and if so, what are your thoughts.

iDNS was just released last month and I don't see any reviews for it at sites like CNET Downloads. The only comments about DNS Enabler that I found are on the developer's site and I would like to read third-party reviews.

 

[jc1350]

Looks like it's moot. Both developers replied and neither supports IPv6 and neither will use or import an existing BIND configuration and zones.

However, webmin, something I've use on Linux, works perfectly on Mac OS. I was reluctant to use webmin because the instructions were very long with a lot of prerequisites and they were very old (circa 2003). But, I found instructions from 2008 for installing webmin that was nothing more than to run setup.sh with sudo.


I don't know if Xcode is needed (something the old instructions claimed) as I installed Xcode on day 2 of owning a Mac, but there were no errors or problems installing webmin. For those not familiar, it's a system configuration utility that is web-based. It uses it's own httpd, so using Apache and your Sites/ directory is not involved. It defaults to port 10000 and, if you select yes at the appropriate prompt, will generate and use its own SSL cert, but this is not something you'd want to access from the Internet. I typically set firewall rules to allow only specific hosts (it also has host and user restrictions as well).