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ddrgen

ddrgen dynamically generates forward and reverse DNS zone files based on information obtained from SMB (Windows File and Printer Sharing) servers.

It's ideal for temporary networks were you need a nice working dynamic DNS happening that pretty much always works. Thanks to the Samba project, for a very long time SMB is not just for Windows. DHCP could have worked, but not everything reports a hostname there. Most likely you'll want to run a file and printer sharing system on the network, so this is most likely a minimum of hassles for you.

What this will generate:

• A forward zone file, so you can resolve "laptop" to "192.168.0.43", or whatever.
• A reverse zone file, so you can look up "192.168.0.43" and get "laptop".
• An optional report, formatted in CSV, for use in some other script.

What this won't work with:

• Machines without a running SMB server. All Windows boxes using Microsoft Networking will work, as well as other boxes using Samba or something similar. This was chosen as it is a fairly standard way to give out names and get names, and not all DHCP clients give out the machine's hostname.
• Giving you a free laptop with the IP "192.168.0.43" ;)

There's an example use of the stats availible, as well as the source code for the page, in PHP.

Requirements

• Samba, Version 3. Version 2 doesn't work due to differences in the smbclient.
• nmap. I have version 3.75. It's formatting dependant again, however I'm pretty sure you can use older versions as the formatting is close enough.
• Python 2.3 or later
• The BIND DNS server, or something similar that supports the same type of zone files.
• Despite the name, it doesn't require a DHCP server.

License

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA.

Download

The current version of ddrgen is 1.0. You can download it as a bzip2'd tarball (11 kb). It was released on 2005-04-30.

Development version

The current development version is held in a Subversion repository. It has a new XML stats output format, and support for scanning Unreal Tournament 2004 (and 2003) games, and also Quake III Arena (and thus Call of Duty and other q3a-based games) games. Code in the Subversion repository is incomplete, and things may be broken. If you want to contribute generally, it's nice if you patch based on the subversion version.

The Subversion repository is located at http://www.ratemyrackmountedserver.com/svn/ddrgen/trunk/. It has read only access to anonymous users.

Where I want this to go some day

• Not rely on external software in order to do the work. Have it all in the script itself. This should also help make it more cross platform. I hear there is a Python Samba interface, but the documentation isn't that great. There's info on how to find printers, but not much else...
• Maybe a separate database for the OS and Server information, that's all fancy and indexed.