$Id: ANNOUNCE,v 1.1 2000/07/11 06:52:47 vixie Exp $

Updatehosts is a system for automatically managing and generating DNS zone
files using flat relational tables.  Some of the features of updatehosts
includes:

1) Automatic generation of DNS zone files including *.in-addr.arpa zones
   for an unlimited number of DNS zones.

2) Automatic generation of BIND V4 or V8 bootstrap files with support
   for most common BIND options.

3) Automatic serial number generation in DNS zone files.

3) Automatic generation of the DHCP bootstrap file.

4) Limited support for DNS updates when using DHCP dynamic addressing.

5) Generation of static hosts files from the same set of information used
   for DNS zone file generation

6) Flexible input file syntax which allows additional information such as
   contact names, etc to be kept with all DNS information.  This information
   can be added without impacting DNS zone file generation.

7) Tools which allow a set of administrators to manage the the nameserver
   configuration without requiring root access.

8) Conversion utilities to convert existing DNS zone files or static host
   tables into the updatehosts input file format.

9) Flexible postprocessing hooks which allow site specific command to be
   run after the file generation is completed.

10) General purpose tool for reading flat ASCII files as database relations.

11) Maintenance of input files under SCCS or RCS control as a user option.

This is updated open source release of the software.  It is protected by
the GNU software copyright and license.

Future plans include a Web front-end update utility.

A mailing list (updatehosts@tic.com) has been set up to share user
experience with the software and also as a repository for any bug reports
and related problems.  Subscribe to this list by sending a subscribe
request to majordomo@tic.com.

Sources can be found at:

ftp://ftp.tic.com/pub/updatehosts/updatehosts-1.1.0.tar.gz

updatehosts requires perl 5 and a C compiler for use.  BIND 8.2.2 from the
Internet Software Consortium (ISC)is highly recommended as the nameserver.
Also the DHCP support is for the ISC version of DHCP.  See http://www.isc.org
for the availability of this software.

Smoot Carl-Mitchell
smoot@tic.com
