Macintosh Server Applications Software at The Mac Orchard

DNS Helper

Freeware

Current Version: 1.6 (November 7, 2003)

DNS Helper is a free application that takes the work out of configuring BIND, the DNS server built into Mac OS X. DNS Helper allows you to:

Create zone, domain, db.cache, and named.conf files for your BIND server without the need to understand the formatting of those files.
Set the needed permissions and ownership on the files after they are created.
Install the files for you into the active system.
Have total control over the DNS Server with the ability to start, stop, and reload BIND.
Set the DNS Server to start at boot time.
Read and save the system.log, filtering out the non-DNS Server related entries if desired.

Currently, DNS Helper does not do the following:

Edit or maintain existing files.

With the 1.5 release, DNS Helper became a full replacement for Mac OS X Server's Server Settings DNS module. Actually, it can do quite a bit more than the Apple software can as of Spring, 2003.

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Download the Mac OS X (Cocoa) version.

Also See . . .

Can't find what you're looking for? Try a search:

Also, if you have an older Mac, be sure to check out the "Classic" applications page for more options.

Finally, take a look at ALEMIA if you think you know that name of an application, but aren't quite sure.

Built Into Mac OS X

Mac OS X has a huge amount of TCP/IP-based server software built into it that I don't specifically cover here. Your "Sharing" Preference Pane allows you to enable and disable these services with a click of the mouse. The software running behind the scenes to provide many of these services is generally of the open source variety. The standard release of Mac OS X includes, among many others:

Apache httpd (web server; enabled via the Sharing Preference Pane).
Postfix (mail server; see Mac OS X Hints for more information).
tnftpd (FTP server; enabled via the Sharing Preference Pane).
OpenSSH (Secure Shell server; enabled via the Sharing Preference Pane via "Remote Login" but additionally configurable via selected applications listed on this page).
BIND (Domain Name System server; see Mac OS X Hints for more information).
Samba (Windows file sharing; enabled via the Sharing Preference Pane).
XFree86 (X Window server; enabled via the "X11" application in your "Utilities" folder, if you elected to install it with Mac OS X).

Of course, Mac OS X Server includes many more, in addition to offering more recent versions of many of the above servers.

Also Consider . . .