PowerDNS manual

PowerDNS BV

pdns@powerdns.com

    It is a book about a Spanish guy called Manual. You should read it.
       -- Dilbert

Table of Contents

1. The PowerDNS dynamic nameserver

1.1. Function & design of PDNS

1.2. About this document

1.3. Release notes

1.3.1. Version 2.6
1.3.2. Version 2.5.1
1.3.3. Version 2.5
1.3.4. Version 2.4
1.3.5. Version 2.3
1.3.6. Version 2.2
1.3.7. Version 2.1
1.3.8. Version 2.0.1
1.3.9. Version 2.0
1.3.10. Version 2.0 Release Candidate 2
1.3.11. Version 2.0 Release Candidate 1
1.3.12. Version 1.99.12 Prerelease
1.3.13. Version 1.99.11 Prerelease
1.3.14. Version 1.99.10 Prerelease
1.3.15. Version 1.99.9 Early Access Prerelease
1.3.16. Version 1.99.8 Early Access Prerelease
1.3.17. Version 1.99.7 Early Access Prerelease
1.3.18. Version 1.99.6 Early Access Prerelease
1.3.19. Version 1.99.5 Early Access Prerelease
1.3.20. Version 1.99.4 Early Access Prerelease
1.3.21. Version 1.99.3 Early Access Prerelease
1.3.22. Version 1.99.2 Early Access Prerelease
1.3.23. Version 1.99.1 Early Access Prerelease

1.4. Acknowledgements

2. Installing on Unix

2.1. Possible problems at this point

2.2. Testing your install

2.2.1. Typical errors

2.3. Running PDNS on unix

3. Installing on Microsoft Windows

3.1. Configuring PDNS on Microsoft Windows
3.2. Running PDNS on Microsoft Windows

4. Configure database connectivity

4.1. Configuring MySQL

4.1.1. Common problems

5. Dynamic resolution using the PipeBackend

5.1. Deploying the PipeBackend with the BindBackend

6. Logging & Monitoring PDNS performance

6.1. Webserver
6.2. Via init.d commands
6.3. Operational logging using syslog

7. Security settings & considerations

7.1. Settings

7.1.1. Running as a less privileged identity
7.1.2. Jailing the process in a chroot

7.2. Considerations

8. Virtual hosting

9. Performance related settings

9.1. Packet Cache
9.2. Query Cache

10. Migrating to PDNS

10.1. Zone2sql

11. Recursion

11.1. Details
11.2. 'Lazy recursion'

12. Master/Slave operation & replication

12.1. Native replication

12.2. Slave operation

12.2.1. Supermaster automatic provisioning of slaves

12.3. Master operation

13. Fancy records for seamless email and URL integration

14. Index of all settings

15. Index of all internal metrics

15.1. Counters & variables

15.1.1. Ring buffers

16. Supported record types and their storage

A. Backends in detail

A.1. PipeBackend protocol

A.1.1. Handshake
A.1.2. Questions
A.1.3. Answers
A.1.4. Sample perl backend

A.2. MySQL backend

A.2.1. Configuration settings
A.2.2. Notes

A.3. MySQL PDNS backend

A.3.1. Notes

A.4. Generic MySQL and PgSQL backends

A.4.1. MySQL specifics
A.4.2. PostgresSQL specifics
A.4.3. Basic functionality
A.4.4. Fancy records
A.4.5. Settings and specifying queries
A.4.6. Native operation
A.4.7. Slave operation
A.4.8. Superslave operation
A.4.9. Master operation

A.5. Generic Oracle backend

A.5.1. Setting up Oracle for use with PowerDNS

A.6. DB2 backend

A.7. Bind zone file backend

A.7.1. Operation
A.7.2. Performance
A.7.3. Master/slave configuration

A.8. ODBC backend

B. PDNS internals

B.1. Controlsocket

B.1.1. pdns_control

B.2. Guardian

B.3. Modules & Backends

B.4. How PDNS translates DNS queries into backend queries

C. Backend writers' guide

C.1. Simple read-only native backends

C.1.1. A sample minimal backend
C.1.2. Interface definition

C.2. Reporting errors

C.3. Declaring and reading configuration details

C.4. Read/write slave-capable backends

C.4.1. Supermaster/Superslave capability

C.5. Read/write master-capable backends

C.6. HOWTO & Frequently Asked Questions

List of Tables
16-1. SOA fields
A-1. MySQL backend capabilities
A-2. MySQL backend capabilities
A-3. Generic PgSQL and MySQL backend capabilities
A-4. Oracle backend capabilities
A-5. DB2 backend capabilities
A-6. Bind zone file backend capabilities
A-7. ODBC backend capabilities
C-1. DNSResourceRecord class
C-2. SOAData struct
C-3. DomainInfo struct