MaraDNS Quick Start guide

This guide is for experienced UNIX/Liunx/BSD users who just want to quickly try out MaraDNS

MaraDNS acts as both a recursive and an authoritative DNS server. In other words, MaraDNS can both be used to speed up the internet, and/or serve domains that you may have.

To try out MaraDNS as a recursive nameserver is easy:

- Compile MaraDNS. Type in './configure; make' in the top-level MaraDNS directory. Note: No need to compile if you downloaded a binary RPM or Debian package.
- Take the file server/maradns and place it in /usr/local/sbin
- Take the file tools/duende and place it in /usr/local/sbin
- Create an empty directory called /etc/maradns
- Create a mararc file. This file only needs to be three lines long on systems with a /dev/urandom file, and four lines long on older operating systems without /dev/urandom

  Here is a sample mararc file:

      	ipv4_bind_addresses = "127.0.0.1"
      	chroot_dir = "/etc/maradns"
      	recursive_acl = "127.0.0.1"

  This mararc file says that MaraDNS will have the ip "127.0.0.1" (this is the bind_address), run from the directory /etc/maradns (the chroot_dir value), and only allow the ip "127.0.0.1" to make recursive queries (the recursive_acl value).
- Place the mararc file in the location /etc/mararc on your system.
- Run MaraDNS as a non-daemon:

  >     	/usr/local/sbin/maradns

  Since MaraDNS needs to bind to a privileged port (port 53), it needs to start up running as root. MaraDNS is designed with security in mind, and will drop root privileges before being visible to the public internet.
- Test MaraDNS in another window or virtual terminal

  >     	dig @127.0.0.1 www.yahoo.com

- In order to make the duende daemonizing tool usable, create a directory named /etc/maradns/logger/

  >     	mkdir /etc/maradns/logger

- If this works, make MaraDNS run as a daemon:

  >     	/usr/local/sbin/duende /usr/local/sbin/maradns

  duende is a tool that daemonizes maradns; the daemonizer is a separate program.
- If this all works, install MaraDNS:

  >     	make install

It is also possible to set up MaraDNS as both an authoritative and recursive name server with the same IP:

- Here is the MaraRC file:

      	ipv4_bind_addresses = "127.0.0.1"
      	chroot_dir = "/etc/maradns"
      	recursive_acl = "127.0.0.1"
      	csv2 = {}
      	csv2["example.com."] = "db.example.com"

- Have a zone file named db.example.com in the `chroot_dir` (`/etc/maradns` above) that looks like this:

      example.com. 10.1.2.3

  (Yes, experienced DNS admins, you can have SOA, NS, MX, SRV, and any other kind of DNS data stored in a csv2 zone file. Read the csv2 man page for details)
- Recurisve queries will be resolved normally
- Queries for `example.com` will resolve to 10.1.2.3
- Any other `name.example.com` query will return a "this host does not exist" DNS reply.

Look in doc (in particular, the tutorial), or read the relevant man pages for more information on how to set up MaraDNS.