MARADNS 8 "January 2002" MARADNS "MaraDNS reference"

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# NAME

maradns - DNS server

# SYNOPSIS

maradns [ -v | -f mararc_file_location ]

# TABLE OF CONTENTS

This man page has the following sections:

>     Name
>     Synopsis
>     Table of Contents
>     Description
>     Usage
>     Firewall Configuration
>     Frequently Asked Questions
>     Bugs
>     Unimplemented Features
>     Legal Disclaimer
>     Authors

# DESCRIPTION

maradns is a DNS server written with security, simplicity, and performance in mind.

maradns has two forms of arguments, both of which are optional.

The first is the location of a mararc file which MaraDNS obtains all configuration information from. The default location of this file is /etc/mararc. This is specified in the form maradns -f mararc_file_location; mararc_file_location is the location of the mararc file.

It is also possible to have MaraDNS display the version number and exit. This is specified by invoking maradns in the form maradns -v or maradns --version

# USAGE

If MaraDNS is functioning only as a recursive nameserver, just one file needs to be set up: The mararc file.

In order for MaraDNS to function as an authoritative nameserver, two or more files need to be set up: the mararc file and one or more "csv2" (or "csv1") zone files.

The format of a csv2 zone file can be obtained from the csv2(5) manual page. The configuration format of the mararc file can be obtained from the mararc(5) manual page.

In order to have MaraDNS run as a daemon, the duende program is used to daemonize MaraDNS. See the duende(8) manual page for details.

# FIREWALL CONFIGURATION

If MaraDNS is being used as an authoritative nameserver, allow UDP connections from all hosts on the internet to UDP port 53 for the IP that the authoritative nameserver uses.

If MaraDNS is being used as a recursive nameserver, the firewall needs to allow the following packets to go to and from the IP the recursive nameserver uses:

- Allow UDP connections from the MaraDNS-running server to any machine on the internet where the UDP destination port is 53
- Allow UDP connections from any machine on the internet to the IP of the recursive server, where the source port from the remote server is 53, and the destination port is between 15000 and 19095 (inclusive)
- Allow UDP connections from IPs that use MaraDNS as a recursive DNS server to port 53 of the MaraDNS server

MaraDNS uses a strong secure RNG for both the query (16 bits of entropy) and the source port of the query (12 bits of entropy). This makes spoofing replies to a MaraDNS server more difficult, since the attacker has only a one in 250 million chance that a given spoofed reply will be considered valid.

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# BUGS

In the unusual case of having a csv2 zone file with Macintosh-style newlines (as opposed to DOS or UNIX newlines), while the file will parse, any errors in the file will be reported as being on line 1.

The maximum allowed number of threads is 5000.

The system startup script included with MaraDNS assumes that the only MaraDNS processes running are started by the script; it stops all MaraDNS processes running on the server when asked to stop MaraDNS.

When a resolver asks for an A record, and the A record is a CNAME which points to a list of IPs, MaraDNS' recursive resolver only returns the first IP listed along with the CNAME. This is somewhat worked around by having a CNAME record only stay in the recursive cache for 15 minutes.

When a resolver asks for an A record, and the A record is a CNAME that points to another CNAME (and possibly a longer CNAME chain), while MaraDNS returns the correct IP (as long as the glueless level is not exceeded), MaraDNS will incorrectly state that the first CNAME in the chain directly points to the IP.

If a NS record points to a list of IPs, and the NS record in question is a "glueless" record (MaraDNS had to go back to the root servers to find out the IP of the machine in question), MaraDNS' recursive resolver only uses the first listed IP as a name server.

When MaraDNS' recursive resolver receives a "host not there" reply, instead of using the SOA minimum of the "host not there" reply as the TTL (Look at RFC1034 §4.3.4), MaraDNS uses the TTL of the SOA reply.

MaraDNS keeps referral NS records in the cache for one day instead of the TTL specified by the remote server.

MaraDNS needs to use the zoneserver program to serve DNS records over TCP. See zoneserver(8) for usage information.

MaraDNS does not use the zone file ("master file") format specified in chapter 5 of RFC1035.

MaraDNS default behavior with star records is not RFC-compliant. In more detail, if a wildcard MX record exists in the form "*.example.com", and there is an A record for "www.example.com", but no MX record for "www.example.com", the correct behavior (based on RFC1034 §4.3.3) is to return "no host" (nothing in the answer section, SOA in the authority section, 0 result code) for a MX request to "www.example.com". Instead, MaraDNS returns the MX record attached to "*.example.com". This can be changed by setting `bind_star_handling` to 1.

Star records (what RFC1034 calls "wildcards") can not be attached to NS records.

MaraDNS recursive resolver treats any TTL shorter than min_ttl seconds (min_ttl_cname seconds when the record is a CNAME record) as if the TTL in question was min_ttl (or min_ttl_cname) seconds long when determining when to expire a record from MaraDNS' cache.

TTLs which are shorter than 20 seconds long are given a TTL of 20 seconds; TTLs which are more than 63072000 (2 years) long are given a TTL of 2 years.

MaraDNS' recursive resolver's method of deleting not recently accessed records from the cache when the cache starts to fill up can deleted records from the cache before they expire. Some people consider this undesirable behavior; I feel it is necessary behavior if one wishes to place a limit on the memory resources a DNS server may use.

MaraDNS' recursive resolver stops resolving when it finds an answer in the AR section. This is a problem in the case where a given host name and IP is registered with the root name servers, and the registered IP is out of date. When this happens, a server "closer" to the root server will give an out-of-date IP, even though the authoritative DNS servers for the host in question have the correct IP. Note that resolving this will result in increased DNS traffic.

MaraDNS, like every other known DNS implementation, only supports a QDCOUNT of 0 or 1.

MaraDNS spawns a new thread for every single recursive DNS request when the data in question is not in MaraDNS' cache; this makes MaraDNS an excellent stress tester for pthread implementations. Many pthread implementations can not handle this kind of load; symptoms include high memory usage and termination of the MaraDNS process.

MaraDNS does not handle the case of a glueless in-bailiwick NS referral very gracefully; this usually causes the zone pointed to by the offending NS record to be unreachable by MaraDNS, even if other DNS servers for the domain have correct NS referrals.

# UNIMPLEMENTED FEATURES

These are features which I do not plan to implement in MaraDNS. If you wish to see these features, consider sponsoring MaraDNS development:

MaraDNS does not have a disk-based caching scheme for authoritative zones.

MaraDNS' UDP server only loads zone files while MaraDNS is first started. UDP Zone information can only be updated by stopping MaraDNS, and restarting MaraDNS again. Note that TCP zone files are loaded from the filesystem at the time the client requests a zone.

MaraDNS does not have support for allowing given host names to only resolve for a limited range of IPs querying the DNS server, or for host names to resolve differently, depending on the IP querying the host name.

MaraDNS 1.4 only has authoritative-only support for IPv6. Deadwood, however, has full IPv6 support.

MaraDNS only allows wildcards at the beginning or end of a host name. E.g. names with wildcards like "foo.*.example.com". "www.*" will work, however, if a default zonefile is set up.

MaraDNS does not have support for MRTG or any other SNMP-based logging mechanism.

# LEGAL DISCLAIMER

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHORS ''AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

# AUTHORS

Sam Trenholme (http://www.samiam.org) is responsible for this man page.

MaraDNS is written by me, Sam Trenholme, with a little help from my friends. Naturally, all errors in MaraDNS are my own (but read the disclaimer above).

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