[rbldnsd] Newbie install question

[Michael Tokarev]

me wrote:
> First off I would like to say what a great program this is. I have it installed on a test system, PIII 450 128M, and no problems.
> Now I am trying to install it on another system for production and I can't seem to get it right. When I go to run 'make install' I get the message "make: *** No rule to make target 'install'. Stop."
> Did I miss some configure options? I look through the email list archives and found one that pointed to a web page, but the web page is no longer there. 

Which web page you're talking about?
There was no install target in the Makefile.  Maybe I'm just too lazy
to provide it, but next someone will request uninstall target...  It
IS a good thing to do, I myself hate installing packages without real
knowlege about which parts of my systems it will touch and in which
way -- in time, it makes too much garbage on the system, and makes me
unhappy... ;)

Seriously, "installation procedure" for rbldnsd is really simple --
one just copies rbldnsd executable and the manpage to any suitable
place (eg /usr/local/sbin and /usr/local/man/man8), and -- perhaps --
creates a user to run rbldnsd as (maybe even several).  Every system
uses its own rules for that stuff (eg, manpages may go to man8/ or
to man1m/ as on solaris systems).

This is why various linux distributions exists too: to provide nice
install/uninstall procedures for the packages.  I already maintain
installable packages in rpm and deb formats for Redhat-based systems
and Debian (I'm a maintainer of Debian package, great thanks to
Santiago Vila who took my package in sponsoring mode -- that ain't
simple).  Someone else maintains rbldnsd in FreeBSD.  Perhaps I can
maintain .pkg files for Solaris too - I have access to one sparc
machine, but that'd be quite problematic for me becasue it was
quite some time ago when I last created pkg file for solaris --
the procedure is quite.. non-obvious ;)

That all to say: in my opinion, it is best to use system-provided
packages for all the software you install, OR to figure out how
to roll your own procedures, so that you will know what is your
system about, even for such a trivial things like rbldnsd.  And
this stuff is really trivial -- sorry to say that, but I'm afraid
you will be asking many other questions about DNS setup and other
stuff.... ;)

/mjt