TheLazy.Dev
Portfolio GitHub

Blog

linux |dns

DNS Server Configuration

waji97

Waji

Posted on February 23, 2023

DNS Server Configuration

Introduction

A DNS service is a system that manages the mapping between domain names and IP addresses, making it possible for computers to locate and connect to websites and other online resources

DNS ports πŸ‘‰ UDP/53 , TCP/53

Simple Lookup πŸ‘‰ Domain name -> IP address
Reverse Lookup πŸ‘‰ IP Address -> Domain name

Recursive DNS servers πŸ‘‰ Look up information in the DNS hierarchy for clients

Authoritative DNS servers πŸ‘‰ Store and provide information about specific domains

Domain Name Structure

✨ Hostname: A name given to a specific device or server on a network, used to identify and distinguish between different devices

✨ Domain name: A human-readable label used to identify a website or other online resource, consisting of one or more words separated by periods, with the rightmost label indicating the TLD

✨ Root domain: The highest level of the domain name system, represented by a period at the end of a domain name, and serving as the starting point for all domain name resolutions

Tree

DNS record types

✨ A Record: An A record maps a domain name to an IPv4 address

✨ AAAA Record: An AAAA record maps a domain name to an IPv6 address

✨ MX Record: An MX record specifies the mail server responsible for accepting email messages for a specific domain name

✨ CNAME Record: A CNAME record maps an alias or nickname for a domain name to the actual domain name

✨ NS Record: An NS record specifies the authoritative name servers for a domain

✨ TXT Record: A TXT record can contain any text data, and is often used for DNS-based authentication and anti-spam measures

✨ SRV Record: An SRV record specifies the location of a service provided by a domain, such as a SIP or XMPP service

✨ SOA Record: An SOA record specifies the authoritative name server for a domain, and contains information about how frequently the DNS information should be refreshed

πŸ’‘ Fully Qualified Domain Name is a complete domain name that specifies the exact location of a resource within the Domain Name System (DNS) hierarchy

πŸ‘‰ For example, the FQDN for a website might be "www.example.com", where "www" is the hostname, "example" is the second-level domain, and "com" is the top-level domain. The complete FQDN specifies the full path to the web server, and can be used by client devices to locate and connect to the server

DNS Workflow

Simple hands on

πŸ’‘ I have used 2 Linux VMs in my VMWare workstation to configure 2 DNS servers (1 for backup) (network is 192.168.1.0/24)

We will start by installing the bind package on both systems

yum -y install bind-*
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

After installation, we will go to

vi /etc/named.conf
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

πŸ‘‰ This file is the main config file for the DNS server

Inside this file I cleared out the comments in this section for clarity

     12 options {
     13         listen-on port 53 { 127.0.0.1; };
     14         listen-on-v6 port 53 { ::1; };
     15         directory       "/var/named";
     16         dump-file       "/var/named/data/cache_dump.db";
     17         statistics-file "/var/named/data/named_stats.txt";
     18         memstatistics-file "/var/named/data/named_mem_stats.txt";
     19         recursing-file  "/var/named/data/named.recursing";
     20         secroots-file   "/var/named/data/named.secroots";
     21         allow-query     { localhost; };
     22         recursion yes;
     23         dnssec-enable yes;
     24         dnssec-validation yes;
     25         bindkeys-file "/etc/named.root.key";
     26         managed-keys-directory "/var/named/dynamic";
     27         pid-file "/run/named/named.pid";
     28         session-keyfile "/run/named/session.key";
     29 };
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Inside this file, we will change the 127.0.0.1 into

listen-on port 53 { any; };
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

πŸ‘‰ We need all of the users to have access to the DNS server

Also need to change this line to accept any

allow-query     { any; };
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Finally changing recursion to no

recursion no;
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

πŸ‘‰ Setting recursion to no will make the recursive query to not go to the cache server. We turn this feature off for security reasons.

πŸ’‘ In simpler words, we are making the DNS server to not respond to any query that DNS doesn't know instead of searching for it

This triggers another issue. If we are using a DNS Local server in our network, it won't search for any other DNS name from other DNS servers. This will make the users that are using the local DNS server not able to access any other website outside of the local DNS address pool.

To solve the above issue we use an ACL rule

     12 acl AllowRecursion {
     13         127.0.0.1;
     14         <Your-Local-Network-ID>;
     15 };
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Also adding

     27         recursion yes;
     28         allow-recursion { AllowRecursion; };
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Looking at the bottom of the config file

include "/etc/named.rfc1912.zones";
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

πŸ‘‰ This is where we include our Domain Names that we bought

Also,

zone "." IN {
        type hint;
        file "named.ca";
};
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

πŸ‘‰ This declares that if the requested address is not found, DNS should look for the requested query from the named.ca file. The named.ca file contains the DNS server addresses from all over the world

Now we need to include the domain name in the zones file

vi /etc/named.rfc1912.zones

# Adding the following at the end
zone "waji.com" IN {
        type master;
        file "waji.zone";
        allow-update { 192.168.1.129; };
        allow-transfer { 192.168.1.129; };
};

zone "1.168.192.in-addr.arpa" IN {
        type master;
        file "waji.rev";
        allow-update { 192.168.1.129; };
        allow-transfer { 192.168.1.129; };
};
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

πŸ‘‰ The 192.168.1.129 is the IP address for the backup DNS server

We have just done the DNS settings for forward and reverse lookup

πŸ’‘ We have master slave and hint types for DNS entries. master for the main DNS server, slave for the backup DNS entry and hint for the cache server

πŸ’‘ waji.zone and waji.rev are the zone files. These files should have the records (A records etc)

if we are not using DDNS, we won't need allow-update line

I am not using DDNS so the above becomes,

zone "waji.com" IN {
        type master;
        file "waji.zone";
        allow-transfer { 192.168.1.129; };
};

zone "1.168.192.in-addr.arpa" IN {
        type master;
        file "waji.rev";
        allow-transfer { 192.168.1.129; };
};
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

πŸ’‘ Never use any in allow-transfer. We are allowing transferring the zone file that contains record names. If this file gets out to any anonymous person, he/she can exploit that file details to harm us

πŸ‘‰ We only have to allow the Slave DNS server. In my case 192.168.1.129 is our slave DNS server

Now, we need to go to

cd /var/named
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Here, we need to create the files

cp named.localhost waji.zone
cp named.localhost waji.rev
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

In the waji.zone file

$TTL 1D
@       IN SOA  ns1.waji.com.         root(
                                        0       ; serial
                                        1D      ; refresh
                                        1H      ; retry
                                        1W      ; expire
                                        3H )    ; minimum
        IN      NS      ns1.waji.com.
ns1     IN      A       192.168.1.128
www     IN      A       192.168.1.128
aaa     IN      CNAME   www.waji.com.
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

πŸ‘‰ Here we have set it so that if the client searches for ns1.waji.com, the server will reply to 192.168.1.128

@ -> is translated to the domain name (origin)

Now, in the waji.rev file

$TTL 1D
@       IN SOA  ns1.waji.com.    root(
                                        0       ; serial
                                        1D      ; refresh
                                        1H      ; retry
                                        1W      ; expire
                                        3H )    ; minimum
        IN      NS      ns1.waji.com.
128     IN      PTR     ns1.waji.com.
128     IN      PTR     www.waji.com.
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

We need to change the ownership for the files and directories under /var/named to named for the DNS to actually work

# Current owner
-rw-r----- 1 root  root   198  2μ›” 23 13:28 waji.rev
-rw-r----- 1 root  root   222  2μ›” 23 13:09 waji.zone

# Changing the group ownership
chown .named ./waji.*

-rw-r----- 1 root  named  198  2μ›” 23 13:28 waji.rev
-rw-r----- 1 root  named  222  2μ›” 23 13:09 waji.zone
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Now, we just need to enable and start the service

systemctl start named
systemctl enable named
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Finally, adding the service to the firewall

firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=dns
firewall-cmd --reload
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

We successfully configured the master DNS server.

πŸ‘‰ From the unconfigured slave DNS server we will test if the master was configured correctly

From the slave DNS server,

nslookup
> server 192.168.1.128   
Default server: 192.168.1.128
Address: 192.168.1.128#53

> www.waji.com
Server:     192.168.1.128
Address:    192.168.1.128#53

Name:   www.waji.com
Address: 192.168.1.128
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

We can test the other domain name

> ns1.waji.com
Server:     192.168.1.128
Address:    192.168.1.128#53

Name:   ns1.waji.com
Address: 192.168.1.128
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Or we can reverse lookup

> 192.168.1.128
128.1.168.192.in-addr.arpa  name = ns1.waji.com.
128.1.168.192.in-addr.arpa  name = www.waji.com.
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Now to configure the slave DNS server,

vi /etc/named.conf

listen-on port 53 { any; };
allow-query     { any; };
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Configuring inside the /etc/named.rfc1912.zones file

zone "waji.com" IN {
        type slave;
        file "slaves/waji.zone.slave";
        notify yes;
        masterfile-format text;
        masters { 192.168.1.128; };
};

zone "1.168.192.in-addr.arpa" IN {
        type slave;
        file "slaves/waji.rev.slave";
        notify yes;
        masterfile-format text;
        masters { 192.168.1.128; };
};
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

πŸ‘‰ We don't need the masterfile-format text configuration in actual setup as it is vulnerable to attacks. The files should be saved in 'binary' which is the default. I am just using this setting to actually check the file contents for this hands on.

Going back to the Master DNS server and adding few lines

zone "waji.com" IN {
        type master;
        file "waji.zone";
        allow-transfer { 192.168.1.129; };
        also-notify { 192.168.1.129; };
};

zone "1.168.192.in-addr.arpa" IN {
        type master;
        file "waji.rev";
        allow-transfer { 192.168.1.129; };
        also-notify { 192.168.1.129; };
};
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

πŸ‘‰ We needed to allow the notify capability from the master as we configured notify yes; in our slave DNS server

Lastly, still from the Master DNS,

vi /etc/named.rfc1912.zones

$TTL 1D
@       IN SOA  ns1.waji.com.   root(
                                        0       ; serial
                                        1D      ; refresh
                                        1H      ; retry
                                        1W      ; expire
                                        3H )    ; minimum
        IN      NS      ns1.waji.com.
        IN      NS      ns2.waji.com.
ns1     IN      A       192.168.1.128
ns2     IN      A       192.168.1.129
www     IN      A       192.168.1.128
aaa     IN      CNAME   www.waji.com.
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

And the for the reverse lookup

vi /var/named/waji.rev

$TTL 1D
@       IN SOA  ns1.waji.com.    root(
                                        0       ; serial
                                        1D      ; refresh
                                        1H      ; retry
                                        1W      ; expire
                                        3H )    ; minimum
        IN      NS      ns1.waji.com.
        IN      NS      ns2.waji.com.
128     IN      PTR     ns1.waji.com.
129     IN      PTR     ns2.waji.com.
128     IN      PTR     www.waji.com.
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Restarting the service

systemctl restart named
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

πŸ‘‰ Back to the slave DNS server,

systemctl start named
systemctl enable named
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

If we navigate to /var/named/slaves

ls -l /var/named/slaves/
total 8
-rw-r--r-- 1 named named 408 Feb 23 14:55 waji.rev.slave
-rw-r--r-- 1 named named 380 Feb 23 14:55 waji.zone.slave
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

βœ” We can confirm that the DNS information is present in the slave DNS server

✨ We looked at what DNS server is and how it works by doing a short hands on using Virtual Machines. We also linked the Master-slave DNS servers that provides redundancy and fault tolerance

πŸ’– πŸ’ͺ πŸ™… 🚩
waji97
Waji

Posted on February 23, 2023

Join Our Newsletter. No Spam, Only the good stuff.

Sign up to receive the latest update from our blog.

Related

Docker Compose up --build not working
docker Docker Compose up --build not working

June 21, 2024

πŸ“Œ 21 Days of DevOps Interviewβ€Š-β€ŠDay 11 -What will happen when you type www.google.com on browserπŸ“ŒΒ 
devops πŸ“Œ 21 Days of DevOps Interviewβ€Š-β€ŠDay 11 -What will happen when you type www.google.com on browserπŸ“ŒΒ 

March 11, 2024

Setup a simple DNS server in CentOS
linux Setup a simple DNS server in CentOS

April 10, 2023

Local Kubernetes with DNS
kubernetes Local Kubernetes with DNS

March 10, 2023

DNS Server Configuration
linux DNS Server Configuration

February 23, 2023