[Dnsmasq-discuss] dnsmasq & DDNS

[Morgan Read]

Thanks Petr & Geert for getting back to me.

I thought I'd followed up days ago - but, there's nothing in the archive...

Geert, I checked DDNS on Wikipedia and there are two meanings of DDNS, 
one automating the update of zone files on industrial scale DNS services 
(BIND I guess) and the other what I understood - updating transient IPs 
to a domain name.  But, neither of those seem relevant to dnsmasq, so I 
came to the conclusion the Fedora article was wrong.

Petr, thanks.  I now see that the article perhaps is not wrong because I 
guess the resolution services provided locally to the local network by 
DHCP might be thought of as DDNS.  But, as you say, that's not going to 
help dynamic resolution of the Internet FQDN to IP of the machine on 
which dnsmasq is running - which is what I meant by 'DDNS client'.

Many thanks
M

On 04/04/2024 11:22 am, Petr Menšík wrote:
> Hi Morgan,
> 
> I am quite sure dnsmasq cannot be client to anything. Especially not 
> dynamic dns client. I would recommend unbound for medium sized networks, 
> dnsmasq is great for small networks. Depends.
> 
> dnsmasq can provide authoritative server parts as well as forwarder 
> caching. You have not specified what means to you to be DDNS client, it 
> might vary somehow. dnsmasq can provide changing machine names with 
> changing IP addresses. If it does DHCP+DNS on your network, it works out 
> of the box. If fact it is kind of difficult to supress it in unwanted. 
> But that works great only with clients using DHCP to dnsmasq. Machine 
> running dnsmasq itself has absolutely no support from dnsmasq, except 
> local DNS cache. It should work if any external tool updates server 
> address, dnsmasq should resolve it with help of upstream forwarder. 
> Whether you use nsupdate or other tool to update your server address, it 
> might work.
> 
> But you cannot use such address for cnames served by dnsmasq, because 
> dnsmasq would need to fetch its target first. It does not know how to do 
> that correctly.
> 
> I think DDNS was meant for DHCP clients only, not the server itself.
> 
> On 01. 04. 24 12:21, Morgan Read via Dnsmasq-discuss wrote:
>> Hi Folks,
>>
>> I've been following this little how to:
>> https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-server/administration/dnsmasq/
>> Which says:
>> 'Fedora Server Edition recommends the lightweight dnsmasq program to 
>> provide DHCP, DDNS and DNS caching service for a server and a small to 
>> medium-sized local network.'
>>
>> Which has led me to believe I can configure dnsmasq as a DDNS 
>> client... However, I've found very little information about how to do 
>> that - nil. And, the dnsmasq manual mentions DDNS precisely once.  All 
>> of which, after well wasted morning, leads me to suspect that dnsmasq 
>> is not meant to be configured as a DDNS client...
>>
>> My question: are my suspicions correct?
>>
>> If I'm wrong and dnsmasq can be configured as a DDNS client and my 
>> google foo has been poo - can anyone give me a pointer to where I 
>> might find more information.
>>
>> Thanks folks and have a good Easter Monday.
>>
>> M
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>> Dnsmasq-discuss at lists.thekelleys.org.uk
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> 

-- 
Morgan Read

Grande Bretagne
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