It’s no secret that I really like DJB‘s software. I think that qmail and djbdns are rock-solid pieces of software, something you can really rely on. But some people just don’t get them and bash them for whatever reasons.

Case in point, djbdns. Many a time I’ve heard the argument that having all tinydns’ domains in a single data file is a PITA. Well, that proves those people don’t get the point in DJB configuration files: you can edit them by hand, but their real power is that they’re easily scriptable! You don’t want having all the domains in a single file? Ok, split them and join them before compiling!

You can do this with the following makefile: split the domains, one per file on the “domains” directory, and work with those files, don’t ever touch the original “data” file again. And if you have a backup server put it’s IP address or FQDN on an env/BACKUP file. Then when you run “make” it will join all the files, compile them and sync the results with the backup server. Easy as pie, don’t you think?

all: data.cdb

data: domains/*[^bB][^aA][^kK~]
        cat $+ > data

data.cdb: data
        /usr/bin/tinydns-data
        [ -f ../env/BACKUP ] && rsync -azv * root@`cat ../env/BACKUP`:`pwd`

clean:
        -rm -f *~ domains/*~