Bulk updating (or even just editing) Custom DNS records

#1

Hey all,
I have been using Mail In a Box for about a year now and I am very happy with it. One annoying snag I bump into from time to time involves DNS records. My MiaB hosts email for five different domains, and and on two of them I have about a dozen subdomains for a number of other services hosted elsewhere.

Periodically I need to change the IP addresses for a dozen records, and right now I have to delete every single one and then manually re-add every single one. It is maddening. It would be incredibly helpful to be able to select a group of records and update them all at the same time, or at the very least put and [edit] button next to [delete] for each record so I don’t have to delete them and re-add them.

I have looked into scripting this via the API but that is not a tenable solution for me. This should be able to be achieved entirely though the WebUI.

If there is a bug bounty for this project I will gladly contribute towards this particular enhancement. It would make a world of difference for me.

Regards,
John

#2

Hi @millerjs

By chance, are the ‘dozen’ records you have to periodically change all located on the same IP address before and after? If so, CNAME’s are your friend.

#3

Unfortunately not, they are spread across a few different servers/IPs.

#4

Maybe you could update /home/user-data/dns/custom.yaml as a text file and then run a DNS update?

2 Likes
#5

Did this work for you @millerjs?

I still have some Custom DNS entries for damains that have long been removed,
and [delete] button throws an error:
domain.name is not a domain name or a subdomain of a domain name managed by this box.

So if this works for you, it could solve my problem as well :slight_smile:

#6

I haven’t tried it yet, but will late this afternoon. Will the changes to the yaml file be picked up automatically or does something need to be restarted or reloaded?

#7

I assume you will need to run the dns_update.py script (but don’t actually know). After making the update to custom.yaml, I would try going through the web interface and making another DNS change to have it run the DNS update.

#8

This worked - I manually edited the custom.yaml file, then I added one record manually through the UI, and all the records updated.

I’m not comfortable with this as a day-to-day operation but for special cases… I suppose it’s acceptable.