dnsmasq
dnsmasq provides a DNS server, a DHCP server with support for DHCPv6 and PXE, and a TFTP server. It is designed to be lightweight and have a small footprint, suitable for resource constrained routers and firewalls. dnsmasq can also be configured to cache DNS queries for improved DNS lookup speeds to previously visited sites.
Installation
Start the daemon
Start/enable dnsmasq.service.
To see if dnsmasq started properly, check the system's journal:
# journalctl -u dnsmasq.service
The network will also need to be restarted so the DHCP client can create a new /etc/resolv.conf.
Configuration
To configure dnsmasq, edit /etc/dnsmasq.conf. The file contains comments explaining the options. For all available options see dnsmasq(8).
port=0.
If dnsmasq will not be used as a local DNS resolver, you may also want to edit dnsmasq.service so that it does not pull in nss-lookup.target:
/etc/systemd/system/dnsmasq.service.d/no-nss-lookup-target.conf
[Unit] Wants=
$ dnsmasq --test
DNS server
To set up dnsmasq as a DNS caching daemon on a single computer specify a listen-address directive, adding in the localhost IP address:
listen-address=::1,127.0.0.1
To use this computer to listen on its LAN IP address for other computers on the network. It is recommended that you use a static LAN IP in this case. E.g.:
listen-address=::1,127.0.0.1,192.168.1.1
Set the number of cached domain names with cache-size=size (the default is 150 and the hard limit is 10000):
cache-size=1000
To validate DNSSEC load the DNSSEC trust anchors provided by the dnsmasq package and set the option dnssec:
conf-file=/usr/share/dnsmasq/trust-anchors.conf dnssec
See dnsmasq(8) for more options you might want to use.
DNS addresses file and forwarding
After configuring dnsmasq, you need to add the localhost addresses as the only nameservers in /etc/resolv.conf. This causes all queries to be sent to dnsmasq.
Since dnsmasq is a stub resolver not a recursive resolver you must set up forwarding to an external DNS server. This can be done automatically by using openresolv or by manually specifying the DNS server address in dnsmasq's configuration.
openresolv
If your network manager supports resolvconf, instead of directly altering /etc/resolv.conf, you can use openresolv to generate configuration files for dnsmasq.
Edit /etc/resolvconf.conf and add the loopback addresses as name servers, and configure openresolv to write out dnsmasq configuration:
/etc/resolvconf.conf
# Use the local name server name_servers="::1 127.0.0.1" resolv_conf_options="trust-ad" # Write out dnsmasq extended configuration and resolv files dnsmasq_conf=/etc/dnsmasq-conf.conf dnsmasq_resolv=/etc/dnsmasq-resolv.conf
Run resolvconf -u so that the configuration files get created. If the files do not exist dnsmasq.service will fail to start.
Edit dnsmasq's configuration file to use openresolv's generated configuration[1]:
# Read configuration generated by openresolv conf-file=/etc/dnsmasq-conf.conf resolv-file=/etc/dnsmasq-resolv.conf
Manual forwarding
First you must set localhost addresses as the only nameservers in /etc/resolv.conf:
/etc/resolv.conf
nameserver ::1 nameserver 127.0.0.1 options trust-ad
Make sure to protect /etc/resolv.conf from modification as described in Domain name resolution#Overwriting of /etc/resolv.conf.
The upstream DNS server addresses must then be specified in dnsmasq's configuration file as server=server_address. Also add no-resolv so dnsmasq does not needlessly read /etc/resolv.conf which only contains the localhost addresses of itself.
/etc/dnsmasq.conf
[...] no-resolv # Google's nameservers, for example server=8.8.8.8 server=8.8.4.4
Now DNS queries will be resolved with dnsmasq, only checking external servers if it cannot answer the query from its cache.
Adding a custom domain
It is possible to add a custom domain to hosts in your (local) network:
local=/lan/ domain=lan
In this example it is possible to ping a host/device (e.g. defined in your /etc/hosts file) as hostname.lan.
Uncomment expand-hosts to add the custom domain to hosts entries:
expand-hosts
Without this setting, you will have to add the domain to entries of /etc/hosts.
Test
To do a lookup speed test choose a website that has not been visited since dnsmasq has been started (drill is part of the ldns package):
$ drill archlinux.org | grep "Query time"
Running the command again will use the cached DNS IP and result in a faster lookup time if dnsmasq is setup correctly:
$ drill archlinux.org | grep "Query time"
;; Query time: 18 msec
$ drill archlinux.org | grep "Query time"
;; Query time: 2 msec
To test if DNSSEC validation is working see DNSSEC#Testing.
DHCP server
By default dnsmasq has the DHCP functionality turned off, if you want to use it you must turn it on. Here are the important settings:
# Only listen to routers' LAN NIC. Doing so opens up tcp/udp port 53 to localhost and udp port 67 to world: interface=enp0s0 # dnsmasq will open tcp/udp port 53 and udp port 67 to world to help with dynamic interfaces (assigning dynamic IPs). # dnsmasq will discard world requests to them, but the paranoid might like to close them and let the kernel handle them. bind-interfaces # Optionally set a domain name domain=example.org # Set default gateway dhcp-option=3,0.0.0.0 # Set DNS servers to announce dhcp-option=6,0.0.0.0 # If your dnsmasq server is also doing the routing for your network, you can use option 121 to push a static route out. # x.x.x.x is the destination LAN, yy is the CIDR notation (usually /24), and z.z.z.z is the host which will do the routing. dhcp-option=121,x.x.x.x/yy,z.z.z.z # Dynamic range of IPs to make available to LAN PC and the lease time. # Ideally set the lease time to 5m only at first to test everything works okay before you set long-lasting records. dhcp-range=192.168.111.50,192.168.111.100,12h # Provide IPv6 DHCP leases, the range is constructed using the network interface as prefix dhcp-range=::f,::ff,constructor:enp0s0 # If you’d like to have dnsmasq assign static IPs to some clients, bind the LAN computers NIC MAC addresses: dhcp-host=aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff,192.168.111.50 dhcp-host=aa:bb:cc:ff:dd:ee,192.168.111.51
See dnsmasq(8) for more options.
Proxy DHCP
In case there is already a DHCP server running on the network and you want to interoperate with it, dnsmasq can be set to behave as a "proxy DHCP", therefore only serving the #PXE server specific information to the client. This mode is only available with IPv4. Use the following syntax, providing the existing DHCP server address:
dhcp-range=192.168.0.1,proxy
Test
From a computer that is connected to the one with dnsmasq on it, configure it to use DHCP for automatic IP address assignment, then attempt to log into the network normally.
If you inspect the /var/lib/misc/dnsmasq.leases file on the server, you should be able to see the lease.
TFTP server
dnsmasq has built-in TFTP server.
To use it, create a root directory for TFTP (e.g. /srv/tftp) to put transferable files in.
enable-tftp tftp-root=/srv/tftp
For increased security it is advised to use dnsmasq's TFTP secure mode. In secure mode only files owned by the dnsmasq user will be served over TFTP. You will need to chown TFTP root and all files in it to dnsmasq user to use this feature.
tftp-secure
See dnsmasq(8) for more options.
PXE server
PXE requires a DHCP and a TFTP server; both can be provided by dnsmasq. To setup the PXE server, follow these steps:
- Setup the #TFTP server and the #DHCP server (in full DHCP or proxy mode) in the dnsmasq configuration file,
- Copy and configure a PXE compatible bootloader (e.g. PXELINUX) in the TFTP root directory,
- Enable PXE in the dnsmasq configuration file:
To simply send one file:
dhcp-boot=lpxelinux.0
To send a file depending on client architecture:
pxe-service=x86PC,"PXELINUX (BIOS)",bios/lpxelinux pxe-service=X86-64_EFI,"PXELINUX (EFI)",efi64/syslinux.efi
- File paths are relative to the TFTP root path
- If the file has a .0 suffix, you must exclude the suffix in
pxe-serviceoptions
In case pxe-service does not work to identify the architecture (especially for UEFI-based clients), combination of dhcp-match and dhcp-boot can be used. See RFC 4578 2.1 for more client-arch numbers for use with dhcp boot protocol.
dhcp-match=set:efi-x86_64,option:client-arch,7 dhcp-match=set:efi-x86_64,option:client-arch,9 dhcp-match=set:efi-x86,option:client-arch,6 dhcp-match=set:bios,option:client-arch,0 dhcp-boot=tag:efi-x86_64,efi64/syslinux.efi dhcp-boot=tag:efi-x86,efi32/syslinux.efi dhcp-boot=tag:bios,bios/lpxelinux.0
See dnsmasq(8) for more options.
The rest is up to the bootloader.
Tips and tricks
Prevent OpenDNS redirecting Google queries
To prevent OpenDNS from redirecting all Google queries to their own search server, add to /etc/dnsmasq.conf:
server=/www.google.com/<ISP DNS IP>
Override addresses
In some cases, such as when operating a captive portal, it can be useful to resolve specific domains names to a hard-coded set of addresses. This is done with the address config:
address=/example.com/1.2.3.4
Furthermore, it is possible to return a specific address for all domain names that are not answered from /etc/hosts or DHCP by using a special wildcard:
address=/#/1.2.3.4
More than one instance
If we want two or more dnsmasq servers works per interface(s).
Static
To do this staticly, server per interface, use interface and bind-interface options. This enforce start second dnsmasq.
Dynamic
In this case we can exclude per interface and bind any others:
except-interface=lo bind-dynamic
Domain blocklisting
To blocklist domains, i.e. answer queries for them with NXDOMAIN, use the address option without specifying the IP address:
address=/blocked.example/ address=/anotherblocked.example/
For ease of use place the blocklist in a separate file, e.g. /etc/dnsmasq.d/blocklist.conf and load it from /etc/dnsmasq.conf with conf-file=/etc/dnsmasq.d/blocklist.conf or conf-dir=/etc/dnsmasq.d/,*.conf.