Software Update: PowerDNS 2.9.13

PowerDNS is a DNS server with a database as a back-end, which makes it easy to manage a large number of DNS entries. Version 2.9.13 has been available for a short time but unfortunately cannot be found on the download page yet. The release notes look like this:

Big news! Windows is back! Our great friend Michel Stol found the time to update the PowerDNS code so it works again under windows.

His changes:

• Generic SQLite support added
• Removed the ODBC backend, replaced it by the Generic ODBC Backend, which has all the cool configurability of the Generic MySQL and PostgreSQL backends.
• The PowerDNS Recursor now runs as a Service. It defaults to running on port 5300, PowerDNS itself is configured to expect the Recursor on port 5300 now.
• The PowerDNS Service is now known as ‘PowerDNS’ to Windows.
• The Installer was redone, this time with NSIS2.
• General updates and fixes.

Other news:

• There appears to be a problem with PowerDNS on Red Hat 7.3 with GCC 2.96 and self-compiled binaries. The symptoms are that PowerDNS works on the foreground but fails as a daemon. We’re working on it.
• If you do note problems, let the list know, if you don’t, please do so as well. Tell us if you use the RPM or compiled yourself.
• It is known that not compiling in MySQL support helps solve the problem, but then you don’t have MySQL.

Bug fixes:

• allow-axfr-ips did not work for individual IP addresses (bug & fix by Norbert Sendetzky)

Improvements:

• Opteron support! Thanks to Jeff Davey for providing a shell on an Opteron. The fixes should also help PowerDNS on other platforms with a 64 bit userspace.
  Btw, the PowerDNS team has a strong desire for an Opteron 🙂
• pdns_recursor jumbles answers now. This means that you can do poor man’s roundrobin by supplying multiple A, MX or AAAA records for a service, and get a random one on top each time. Interestingly, this feature appeared out of nowhere, this change was made to the authoritative code but due to the wonders of code-reuse had an effect on pdns_recursor too.
• Big LDAP cleanup. Support for TLS was added. Zone2LDAP also gained the ability to generate ldif files containing a tree or a list of entries. (Norbert Sendetzky)
• Zone2sql is now somewhat clearer when reporting malformed line errors – it did not always include the name of the file causing a problem, especially for big installations. Problem noted by Thom May.
• pdns_recursor now survives the expiration of all its root records, most often caused by prolonged disconnection from the net.