Application examples:
- Caching DNS server/forwarder in a local network
- Container/Host DNS cache
- DNS proxy providing DNS
search
capabilities to musl-libc
based clients, particularly Alpine Linux
Features
- Automatically set upstream
nameservers
and search
domains from resolv.conf
- Insert itself into the host's /etc/resolv.conf on start
- Serve static A/AAAA records from a hosts file
- Provide DNS response caching
- Replicate the
search
domain treatment not supported by musl-libc
based Linux distributions
- Supports virtually unlimited number of
search
paths and nameservers
(related Kubernetes article)
- Configure stubzones (different nameserver for specific domains)
- Round-robin of DNS records
- Send server metrics to Graphite and StatHat
- Configuration through both command line flags and environment variables
Resolve logic
DNS queries are resolved in the style of the GNU libc resolver:
- The first nameserver (as listed in resolv.conf or configured by
--nameservers
) is always queried first, additional servers are considered fallbacks
- Multiple
search
domains are tried in the order they are configured.
- Single-label queries (e.g.: "redis-service") are always qualified with the
search
domains
- Multi-label queries (ndots >= 1) are first tried as absolute names before qualifying them with the
search
domains
Command-line options / environment variables
Flag |
Description |
Default |
Environment vars |
--listen, -l |
Address to listen on host[:port] |
127.0.0.1:53 |
$DNSMASQ_LISTEN |
--default-resolver, -d |
Update resolv.conf to make go-dnsmasq the host's nameserver |
False |
$DNSMASQ_DEFAULT |
--nameservers, -n |
Comma delimited list of nameservers host[:port] . IPv6 literal address must be enclosed in brackets. (supersedes etc/resolv.conf) |
- |
$DNSMASQ_SERVERS |
--stubzones, -z |
Use different nameservers for given domains. Can be passed multiple times. domain[,domain]/host[:port][,host[:port]] |
- |
$DNSMASQ_STUB |
--hostsfile, -f |
Path to a hosts file (e.g. ‘/etc/hosts‘) |
- |
$DNSMASQ_HOSTSFILE |
--hostsfile-poll, -p |
How frequently to poll hosts file for changes (seconds, ‘0‘ to disable) |
0 |
$DNSMASQ_POLL |
--search-domains, -s |
Comma delimited list of search domains domain[,domain] (supersedes /etc/resolv.conf) |
- |
$DNSMASQ_SEARCH_DOMAINS |
--enable-search, -search |
Qualify names with search domains to resolve queries |
False |
$DNSMASQ_ENABLE_SEARCH |
--rcache, -r |
Capacity of the response cache (‘0‘ disables caching) |
0 |
$DNSMASQ_RCACHE |
--rcache-ttl |
TTL for entries in the response cache |
60 |
$DNSMASQ_RCACHE_TTL |
--no-rec |
Disable forwarding of queries to upstream nameservers |
False |
$DNSMASQ_NOREC |
--fwd-ndots |
Number of dots a name must have before the query is forwarded |
0 |
$DNSMASQ_FWD_NDOTS |
--ndots |
Number of dots a name must have before making an initial absolute query (supersedes /etc/resolv.conf) |
1 |
$DNSMASQ_NDOTS |
--round-robin |
Enable round robin of A/AAAA records |
False |
$DNSMASQ_RR |
--systemd |
Bind to socket(s) activated by Systemd (ignores --listen) |
False |
$DNSMASQ_SYSTEMD |
--verbose |
Enable verbose logging |
False |
$DNSMASQ_VERBOSE |
--syslog |
Enable syslog logging |
False |
$DNSMASQ_SYSLOG |
--multithreading |
Enable multithreading (experimental) |
False |
|
--help, -h |
Show help |
|
|
--version, -v |
Print the version |
|
|
Enable Graphite/StatHat metrics
EnvVar: GRAPHITE_SERVER
Default:
Set to the host:port
of the Graphite server
EnvVar: GRAPHITE_PREFIX
Default: go-dnsmasq
Set a custom prefix for Graphite metrics
EnvVar: STATHAT_USER
Default:
Set to your StatHat account email address
Usage
Run from the command line
sudo ./go-dnsmasq [options]
Serving A/AAAA records from a hosts file
The --hostsfile
parameter expects a standard plain text hosts file with the only difference being that a wildcard *
in the left-most label of hostnames is allowed. Wildcard entries will match any subdomain that is not explicitly defined.
For example, given a hosts file with the following content:
192.168.0.1 db1.db.local
192.168.0.2 *.db.local
Queries for db2.db.local
would be answered with an A record pointing to 192.168.0.2, while queries for db1.db.local
would yield an A record pointing to 192.168.0.1.