.. _dns-forwarding:
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DNS Forwarding
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Configuration
=============
VyOS provides DNS infrastructure for small networks. It is designed to be
lightweight and have a small footprint, suitable for resource constrained
routers and firewalls, for this we utilize PowerDNS recursor.
The VyOS DNS forwarder does not require an upstream DNS server. It can serve as a
full recursive DNS server - but it can also forward queries to configurable
upstream DNS servers. By not configuring any upstream DNS servers you also
avoid to be tracked by the provider of your upstream DNS server.
.. cfgcmd:: set service dns forwarding system
Forward incoming DNS queries to the DNS servers configured under the ``system
name-server`` nodes.
.. cfgcmd:: set service dns forwarding name-server
Send all DNS queries to the IPv4/IPv6 DNS server specified under ``.
You can configure multiple nameservers here.
.. cfgcmd:: set service dns forwarding domain server
Forward received queries for a particular domain (specified via `domain-name`)
to a given name-server. Multiple nameservers can be specified. You can use
this feature for a DNS split-horizon configuration.
.. note:: This also works for reverse-lookup zones (``18.172.in-addr.arpa``).
.. cfgcmd:: set service dns forwarding allow-from
Given the fact that open DNS recursors could be used on DDOS amplification
attacts, you must configure the networks which are allowed to use this
recursor. A network of ``0.0.0.0/0`` or ``::/0`` would allow all IPv4 and
IPv6 networks to query this server. This is on general a bad idea.
.. cfgcmd:: set service dns forwarding dnssec
The PowerDNS Recursor has 5 different levels of DNSSEC processing, which can
be set with the dnssec setting. In order from least to most processing, these
are:
* **off** In this mode, no DNSSEC processing takes place. The recursor will
not set the DNSSEC OK (DO) bit in the outgoing queries and will ignore the
DO and AD bits in queries.
* **process-no-validate** In this mode the Recursor acts as a "security
aware, non-validating" nameserver, meaning it will set the DO-bit on
outgoing queries and will provide DNSSEC related RRsets (NSEC, RRSIG) to
clients that ask for them (by means of a DO-bit in the query), except for
zones provided through the auth-zones setting. It will not do any
validation in this mode, not even when requested by the client.
* **process** When dnssec is set to process the behaviour is similar to
process-no-validate. However, the recursor will try to validate the data
if at least one of the DO or AD bits is set in the query; in that case,
it will set the AD-bit in the response when the data is validated
successfully, or send SERVFAIL when the validation comes up bogus.
* **log-fail** In this mode, the recursor will attempt to validate all data
it retrieves from authoritative servers, regardless of the client's DNSSEC
desires, and will log the validation result. This mode can be used to
determine the extra load and amount of possibly bogus answers before
turning on full-blown validation. Responses to client queries are the same
as with process.
* **validate** The highest mode of DNSSEC processing. In this mode, all
queries will be validated and will be answered with a SERVFAIL in case of
bogus data, regardless of the client's request.
.. note:: The famous UNIX/Linux ``dig`` tool sets the AD-bit in the query.
This might lead to unexpected query results when testing. Set ``+noad``
on the ``dig`` commandline when this is the case.
.. note:: The ``CD``-bit is honored correctly for process and validate. For
log-fail, failures will be logged too.
.. cfgcmd:: set service dns forwarding ignore-hosts-file
Do not use local ``/etc/hosts`` file in name resolution. VyOS DHCP server
will use this file to add resolvers to assigned addresses.
.. cfgcmd:: set service dns forwarding max-cache-entries
Maximum number of DNS cache entries. 1 million per CPU core will generally
suffice for most installations.
.. cfgcmd:: set service dns forwarding negative-ttl
A query for which there is authoritatively no answer is cached to quickly
deny a record's existence later on, without putting a heavy load on the
remote server. In practice, caches can become saturated with hundreds of
thousands of hosts which are tried only once. This setting, which defaults
to 3600 seconds, puts a maximum on the amount of time negative entries are
cached.
.. cfgcmd:: set service dns forwarding listen-address
The local IPv4 or IPv6 addresses to bind the DNS forwarder to. The forwarder will listen on this address for
incoming connections.
Example
=======
A VyOS router with two interfaces - eth0 (WAN) and eth1 (LAN) - is required to implement a split-horizon DNS configuration for example.com.
In this scenario:
* All DNS requests for example.com must be forwarded to a DNS server at 192.0.2.254
and 2001:db8:cafe::1
* All other DNS requests will be forwarded to a different set of DNS servers at 192.0.2.1,
192.0.2.2, 2001:db8::1:ffff and 2001:db8::2:ffff
* The VyOS DNS forwarder will only listen for requests on the eth1 (LAN) interface addresses - 192.168.1.254
for IPv4 and 2001:db8::ffff for IPv6
* The VyOS DNS forwarder will only accept lookup requests from the LAN subnets - 192.168.1.0/24 and 2001:db8::/64
.. code-block:: none
set service dns forwarding domain example.com server 192.0.2.254
set service dns forwarding domain example.com server 2001:db8:cafe::1
set service dns forwarding name-server 192.0.2.1
set service dns forwarding name-server 192.0.2.2
set service dns forwarding name-server 2001:db8::1:ffff
set service dns forwarding name-server 2001:db8::2:ffff
set service dns forwarding listen-address 192.168.1.254
set service dns forwarding listen-address 2001:db8::ffff
set service dns forwarding allow-from 192.168.1.0/24
set service dns forwarding allow-from 2001:db8::/64
Operation
=========
.. opcmd:: reset dns forwarding
Resets the local DNS forwarding cache database. You can reset the cache for all
entries or only for entries to a specific domain.
.. opcmd:: restart dns forwarding
Restarts the DNS recursor process. This also invalidates the local DNS forwarding cache.