[Dnsmasq-discuss] questions and ...

[Simon Kelley]

Dirk Schenkewitz wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> well, where to start? Short story: 2 days ago I discovered dnsmasq, 
> installed the RPM for SuSE, discovered that it could not read the 
> dhcp-lease file, compiled it from the sources, re-installed and - found 
> it working like a charm! :)

A small amount of history might help here. In dnsmasq 1.x, the way to 
integrate DNS and DHCP was to read the lease file of ISC dhcpd. Dnsmasq 
2.x replaced that with an integrated DHCP server. Very early versions of 
dnsmasq 2.x ommited the ISC-integration code completely, but it got 
added back in about 2.5, as an alternative to continuing support of the 
1.x series. Since the Suse packages were created after the 2.0 
transition, they didn't worry about backward-compatibility, and 
continued to omit the ISC code.

Dirk, you might like to consider using dnsmasq's integrated DHCP server, 
there is a tutorial in migrating in "UPGRADING_to_2.0"
> 
> Here is my first question: Is it somehow possible to tell from the 
> executable binary which flags were set when it was compiled?
> If not, I have an idea (or a feature request): 'dnsmasq --info' could 
> tell about all the abilities that a certain dnsmasq binary has. How 
> about that?

That's an excellent idea, though I'll probably add it to the output of 
dnsmasq --help, to avoid adding Yet Another Option. There are three or 
four compile-time options now, so this is worthwhile.

> But then I got the weird idea to use the ORSC root servers. I wrote the 
> list of them into /etc/dnsmasq-resolv.conf, told dnsmasq to read that 
> instead of /etc/resolv.conf - and got NXDOMAIN for www.google.com. Now I 
> know the meaning of "...It is not capable of recursively answering 
> arbitrary queries starting from the root servers...". :)
> 
> So here is my 2nd question: How can I use the ORSC root servers instead 
> of the usual ones? Any idea what might be the easiest/cheapest way do that?

If dnsmasq were to become a recursive nameserver, capable of using just 
root servers, it would be a very different piece of code. I don't thinlk 
it would be very appropriate for most of the places where dnsmasq is 
used. I doubt that a full recusive nameserver would fit well on a 
Linkgear ot Netsys router, and I doubt the root server admins would be 
happy to have millions of them banging directly on the root servers,
> 
> I had the idea to leave one instance of tinydns (of the djbdns-package 
> of tools) running and have it listen & serve at the localhost address, 
> but that does not work.

I should be possible to make that work, and it would be my 
recommendation, if  you really want to use thr root servers.
> Anyway, I would rather get rid of djbdns completely, with all the 
> combinations we have, maintaining it became sort of a PITA...
> 
> 
> @ Simon Kelley: There are some links at your page about dnsmasq. The 
> link to the german text is broken. I found these in german:
> http://www.linuxnetmag.com/de/issue7/m7dnsmasq1.html
I'll change that, thanks.

Cheers,

Simon.