Jan-Piet Mens

Congratulations to our friends at NLnet Labs for today's release of the Unbound name server.

Quoting myself from the press release:

We are very impressed with Unbound," said Jan-Piet Mens, author of the forthcoming book, "Alternative DNS Servers." "It is great code, very versatile, and it is the fastest caching server we tested."

If you need a caching and validating name server, get Unbound; it's worth your while (and I discuss it thoroughly in my book).

We've been given the International Standard Book Number (ISBN) for my upcoming book, Alternative DNS Servers: the number is 978-0-9544529-9-5.

I've completed the last work on the appendixes (appendices); quite a long explanation of (Open)LDAP, including installation of Symas' offering, and a sexy little explanation on how you can use MySQL User Defined Functions to tweak your back-end DNS databases. (I believe many an administrator will enjoy that.)

The book is progressing very well. I'm currently working on the index. Parts of that are easy because I can automate them, others are more difficult.

I'll keep you posted.

Thanks for the T-shirt, guys, I really appreciate it:

and it fits. I hope the chapter in my book does your brand new server justice.

I've been granted permission to use the partial screen shot of a Lotus Domino configuration document in my book:

With the understanding that use will be tailored as described in your [...] submission below, your request to use IBM copyrighted material has been approved.

Wow.

Are you wondering why I asked for permission? Well, it wouldn't have occurred to me to ask, but my publisher "forced" me to, and he is right, of course.

BTW, Microsoft gives "blanket" approvals providing I add appropriate copyright statements, as do Mozilla.

I've submitted an application for Apple Safari screen shots, but I'm still waiting for approval of that…

On the weekend I committed quite a bit of material for my book (my publisher and I use a subversion repository for communication). We're about half way through with the first review (there will be at least one more), and I feel pretty good about it.

Our friends at Symas are great. They have generously set up a Web site for readers of my upcoming book, where readers will be able to download a working package of Symas OpenLDAP (the product formerly known as Connexitor Directory Services.)

Readers who want to set up one of the DNS servers with an LDAP back-end, will be able to do so with the least possible bit of hassle and concentrate on getting their DNS server working.

Very much appreciated, guys!

As a matter of curiosity, it occurs to me to record how many hits Google brings up now for the search string "alternative DNS servers".

Will that number increase dramatically a few months after my book has been published, I wonder?