[Dnsmasq-discuss] Announce: dnsmasq-2.53 release candidate 1

[clemens fischer]

Simon Kelley wrote:

> Now seems to be a good time to start the process of releasing
> dnsmasq-2.53. There's no outstanding development work, and a fairly
> fat list of changes since 2.52, back in January.
> 
> Therefore I've made a first release candidate, available at
> 
> http://www.thekelleys.org.uk/dnsmasq/release-candidates/dnsmasq-2.53rc1.tar.gz
> 
> As many people as can, please test this, The more people test, the
> lower the chance I get to wear a brown-paper bag after it's released :-)

As far as I came to know your work there might be no opportunity to see
you with that brown paper bag, but if you feel compelled to wear one,
please post a snapshot at the usual places 8-)

The 53rc1 is currently running here without any problems!  I'm most
grateful to you for the "logging-to-stderr" option, the rebind-domain-ok
and rebind-localhost-ok, all the other helpful hints and your
responsiveness!

The changelog:

> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> version 2.53
> ...
>            Rationalised the DHCP tag system. Every configuration item
>            which can set a tag does so by adding "set:<tag>" and
>            every configuration item which is conditional on a tag is
>            made so by "tag:<tag>". The NOT operator changes to '!',
>            which is a bit more intuitive too. Dhcp-host directives
>            can set more than one tag now. The old '#' NOT,
>            "net:" prefix and no-prefixes are still honoured, so
>            no existing config file needs to be changed, but
>            the documentation and new-style config files should be
>            much less confusing.

This is good stuff.  One day the provided example configuration needs
rearrangement in that dns-, dhcp- and tftp-options have no order there.

I propose putting logging and dns options first, then dhcp ranges with
citation of the "NOTES" section from the manual regarding the tag system
first, then examples concerning window$ and mac boxes and thereafter
tftp options, again with examples for the other two operating systems.

> ...
>            If we send vendor-class encapsulated options based on the
>            vendor-class supplied by the client, and no explicit
>            vendor-class option is given, echo back the vendor-class
>            from the client.

How does this work?  Does this info get echoed to the client or the log?

> ...
>            Added interface:<iface name> part to dhcp-range. The
>            semantics of this are very odd at first sight, but it
>            allows a single line  of the form
>                dhcp-range=interface:virt0,192.168.0.4,192.168.0.200
>            to be added to dnsmasq configuration which then supplies
>            DHCP and DNS services to that interface, without affecting
>            what services are supplied to other interfaces and
>            irrespective of the existance or lack of
>                interface=<interface>
>            lines elsewhere in the dnsmasq configuration. The idea is
>            that such a line can be added automatically by libvirt
>            or equivalent systems, without disturbing any manual
>            configuration.

Very useful!  I can use this immediately myself.  How is this applied to
DNS services?  I want to run dnsmasq mainly for dhcp with dns served by
bind-9, because I'm testing IPv6 with DNSSEC, but I can imagine
production dhcp clients using some other forwarder.

> ...
>            Allow --log-facility=- to force all logging to
>            stderr. Suggestion from Clemens Fischer.

I have all daemons running supervised by runsv, where the logs go to
stderr and the superviser process manages a pipe between the daemon and
the logger, which in turn does filtering, rotation and compression.
This not only provides for very good logging, but also allows making
one-off daemons/handlers easy.  Some of my programs are simple scripts
taking network-I/O from stdin/stdout connected by ipsvd and logging to
stderr.

> ...
>            Add --rebind-domain-ok and --rebind-localhost-ok.
>            Suggestion from Clemens Fischer.
> 
>            Log replies to queries of type TXT, when --log-queries
>            is set.

This enables use of the rebinding protection but having DNSBL spam
protection at the same time.


clemens