cli53 provides import and export from BIND format and simple command line management of Route 53 domains.

Features:

• import and export BIND format

• create, delete and list hosted zones

• create, delete and update individual records

• create AWS extensions: failover, geolocation, latency, weighted and ALIAS records

Installation is easy, just download the binary from the github releases page (builds are available for Linux, Mac and Windows): https://github.com/barnybug/cli53/releases/latest

$ sudo mv cli53-my-platform /usr/local/bin/cli53
$ sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/cli53

To configure your Amazon credentials, either place them in a file ~/.aws/credentials:

[default]
aws_access_key_id = AKID1234567890
aws_secret_access_key = MY-SECRET-KEY

Or set the environment variables: AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID and AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY.

You can switch between different sets in the credentials file by passing --profile to any command, or setting the environment variable AWS_PROFILE.

For more information, see: http://blogs.aws.amazon.com/security/post/Tx3D6U6WSFGOK2H/A-New-and-Standardized-Way-to-Manage-Credentials-in-the-AWS-SDKs

To build yourself from source (you will need golang 1.5 installed):

$ export GO15VENDOREXPERIMENT=1
$ go get github.com/barnybug/cli53
$ cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/barnybug/cli53
$ make install

This will produce a binary cli53 in ~/go/bin, after this follow the steps as above.

Create a hosted zone:

$ cli53 create example.com --comment 'my first zone'

Check what we've done:

$ cli53 list

Import a BIND zone file:

$ cli53 import --file zonefile.txt example.com

Replace with an imported zone, waiting for completion:

$ cli53 import --file zonefile.txt --replace --wait example.com

Manually create some records:

$ cli53 rrcreate example.com 'www 3600 A 192.168.0.1'
$ cli53 rrcreate --replace example.com 'www 3600 A 192.168.0.2'
$ cli53 rrcreate example.com '@ MX "10 192.168.0.1" "20 192.168.0.2"'

For CNAME records, relative domains have no trailing dot, but absolute domains should:

$ cli53 rrcreate example.com 'login CNAME www'
$ cli53 rrcreate example.com 'mail CNAME ghs.googlehosted.com.'

Export as a BIND zone file (for backup!):

$ cli53 export example.com

Create some weighted records:

$ cli53 rrcreate --identifier server1 --weight 10 example.com 'www A 192.168.0.1'
$ cli53 rrcreate --identifier server2 --weight 20 example.com 'www A 192.168.0.2'

Create an alias to an ELB:

$ cli53 rrcreate example.com 'www AWS ALIAS A dns-name.elb.amazonaws.com. ABCDEFABCDE false'

Create an alias to an A record:

$ cli53 rrcreate example.com 'www AWS ALIAS A server1 $self false'

Create an alias to a CNAME:

$ cli53 rrcreate example.com 'docs AWS ALIAS CNAME mail $self false'

Further documentation is available, e.g.:

$ cli53 --help
$ cli53 rrcreate --help

Please open a github issue including cli53 version number cli53 --version and the commands or a zone file to reproduce the issue. A good bug report is much appreciated!

Pull requests are gratefully received, though please do include a test case too.

I've since rewritten the original python cli53. As people were still installing the old version I've taken it off pypi. If you must, you can still install the python cli53 by giving pip the github branch:

$ pip install git+https://github.com/barnybug/cli53.git@python

Bare in mind I'll no longer be supporting this any more, so any bug reports will be flatly closed!

Some DNS providers export broken bind files, without the trailing '.' on CNAME records. This is a requirement for absolute records (i.e. ones outside of the qualifying domain).

If you see CNAME records being imported to route53 with an extra mydomain.com on the end (e.g. ghs.google.com.mydomain.com), then you need to fix your zone file before importing:

    $ perl -pe 's/(CNAME\s+[-a-zA-Z0-9.-_]+)(?!.)$/$1./i' broken.txt > fixed.txt

To manage zones that have both a private and a public zone, you must specify the zone ID instead the domain name, which is ambiguous. This is the 13 character ID after '/hostedzone/' you can see in the output to 'cli53 list'. eg:

$ cli53 rrcreate ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ 'name A 127.0.0.1'

As Amazon limits operations to a maximum of 100 changes, if you perform a large operation that changes over 100 resource records it will be split. An operation that involves deletes, followed by updates such as an import with --replace will very briefly leave the domain inconsistent. You have been warned!

0.6.0 New go version released!