MARADNS(8)                     MaraDNS reference                    MARADNS(8)



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NAME
       maradns - DNS server

SYNOPSIS
       maradns [ -v | -f mararc_file_location ]

TABLE OF CONTENTS
       This man page has the following sections:

           Name
           Synopsis
           Table of Contents
           Description
           Usage
           Firewall Configuration
           Frequently Asked Questions
           Bugs
           Unimplemented Features
           Legal Disclaimer
           Authors


DESCRIPTION
       maradns is a DNS server written with security, simplicity, and
       performance in mind.

       maradns has two forms of arguments, both of which are optional.

       The first is the location of a mararc file which MaraDNS obtains all
       configuration information from.  The default location of this file is
       /etc/mararc.  This is specified in the form maradns -f
       mararc_file_location; mararc_file_location is the location of the
       mararc file.

       It is also possible to have MaraDNS display the version number and
       exit. This is specified by invoking maradns in the form maradns -v or
       maradns --version

USAGE
       If MaraDNS is functioning only as a recursive nameserver, just one file
       needs to be set up: The mararc file.

       In order for MaraDNS to function as an authoritative nameserver, two or
       more files need to be set up: the mararc file and one or more "csv1"
       zone files.

       The configuration formation of a csv1 zone file can be obtained from
       the csv1(5) manual page. The configuration format of the mararc file
       can be obtained from the mararc(5) manual page.

       In order to have MaraDNS run as a daemon, the duende program is used to
       daemonize MaraDNS. See the duende(8) manual page for details.

FIREWALL CONFIGURATION
       If MaraDNS is being used as an authoritative nameserver, allow UDP
       connections from all hosts on the internet to UDP port 53 for the IP
       that the authoritative nameserver uses.

       If MaraDNS is being used as a recursive nameserver, the firewall needs
       to allow the following packets to go to and from the IP the recursive
       nameserver uses:

       * Allow UDP connections from the MaraDNS-running server to any machine
         on the internet where the UDP destination port is 53

       * Allow UDP connections from any machine on the internet to the IP of
         the recursive server, where the source port from the remote server is
         53, and the destination port is between 15000 and 19095 (inclusive)

       * Allow UDP connections from IPs that use MaraDNS as a recursive DNS
         server to port 53 of the MaraDNS server

       MaraDNS uses a strong secure RNG for both the query (16 bits of
       entropy) and the source port of the query (12 bits of entropy). This
       makes spoofing replies to a MaraDNS server more difficult, since the
       attacker has only a one in 250 million chance that a given spoofed
       reply will be considered valid.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
    INDEX

           1. I'm still using version 1.0 of MaraDNS

           2. How do I try out MaraDNS?

           3. What license is MaraDNS released under?

           4. How do I report bugs in MaraDNS?

           5. Some of the postings to the mailing list do not talk about
           MaraDNS!

           6. How do I get off the mailing list?

           7. How do I set up reverse DNS on MaraDNS?

           8. I am on a slow network, and MaraDNS can not process recursive
           queries

           9. When I try to run MaraDNS, I get a cryptic error message.

           10. After I start MaraDNS, I can not see the process when I run
           netstat -na

           11. What string library does MaraDNS use?

           12. Why does MaraDNS use a multi-threaded model?

           13. I feel that XXX feature should be added to MaraDNS

           14. I feel that MaraDNS should use another documentation format

           15. Is there any process I need to follow to add a patch to
           MaraDNS?

           16. Can MaraDNS act as a primary nameserver?

           17. Can MaraDNS act as a secondary nameserver?

           18. What is the difference between an authoritative and a recursive
           DNS server?

           19. The getzone client isn't allowing me to add certain hostnames
           to my zone

           20. Is MaraDNS portable?

           21. Can I use MaraDNS in Windows?

           22. MaraDNS freezes up after being used for a while

           23. What kind of Python integration does MaraDNS have

           24. Doesn't "kvar" mean "four" in Esperanto?

           25. How scalable is MaraDNS?

           26. I am having problems setting upstream_servers

           27. Why doesn't the MaraDNS.org web page validate?

           28. How do MX records work?

           29. Does MaraDNS have support for SPF?

           30. I'm having problems resolving CNAMES I have set up.

           31. I have a NS delegation, and MaraDNS is doing strange things.

           32. I am transferring a zone from another server, but the NS
           records are these strange "synth-ip" records.

           33. Where is the root.hints file?

           34. Are there any plans to use autoconf to build MaraDNS?

           35. How do I change the compiler or compile-time flags with
           MaraDNS' build process?

           36. Will you make a package for the particular Linux distribution I
           am using?

           37. I am using the native Windows port of MaraDNS, and some
           features are not working.

           38. MaraDNS isn't starting up

           39. You make a lot of releases of MaraDNS; at our ISP/IT
           department, updating software is non-trivial.

    ANSWERS

    1. I'm still using version 1.0 of MaraDNS

       MaraDNS 1.0 will continue to be supported until December 21, 2007; this
       means that MaraDNS 1.0 bug fixes will still be applied. After
       2007/12/21, MaraDNS 1.0 will no longer be fully supported; the only
       updates, at that point, would be bugtraq-worthy critical security
       fixes. Not even these security updates will be applied after December
       21, 2010.

       People who wish to run MaraDNS 1.0 unsupported after 2010/12/21 need to
       keep in mind that MaraDNS 1.0 is not Y2038 compliant, and will have
       problems starting in 2036 or so. MaraDNS 1.2, on the other hand, is
       fully Y2038 compliant.

       There is still a FAQ for version 1.0 of MaraDNS available here.

       Updating from 1.0 to 1.2 requires a minimum number of changes; with
       most configurations, MaraDNS 1.2 is fully compatible with MaraDNS 1.0
       data files. Details are in the updating document in the tutorial.

       While csv1 zone files are fully supported in MaraDNS 1.2, there is a
       Perl script for updating from CSV1 to CSV2 zone files in the tools/
       directory of MaraDNS 1.2.

    2. How do I try out MaraDNS?

       Read the quick start guide, which is the file named 0QuickStart in the
       MaraDNS distribution.

    3. What license is MaraDNS released under?

       MaraDNS 1.2 is released with the following two-clause BSD-type license:

           Copyright (c) 2002-2007 Sam Trenholme

           TERMS

           Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
           modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
           are met:

           1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
           notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

           2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above
           copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following
           disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided
           with the distribution.

           This software is provided 'as is' with no guarantees of correctness
           or fitness for purpose.

    4. How do I report bugs in MaraDNS?

       Please contact me; my email address is at
       http://www.maradns.org/contact.html.  Please be sure to include all
       information requested there, including the operating system you are
       using, the version of MaraDNS you are using, your mararc configuration
       file, and all relevant zone files.

    5. Some of the postings to the mailing list do not talk about MaraDNS!

       In cases where I post something to the mailing list which does not
       directly talk about MaraDNS, the subject line will not have [MARA] in
       it, but will have some form of the word CHATTER in it.

       This way, people who do not like this can set up mail filters to filter
       out anything that comes from this list and doesn't have [MARA] in the
       subject line, or simply unsubscribe from the list and read the list
       from the archives; if one needs to report a bug, they can subscribe to
       the list again, post their bug, then unsubscribe after a week.

       Another option is to set up one's Freshmeat preferences to be notified
       in email every time I update MaraDNS at Freshmeat. This will give one
       email notice of any critical bug fixes without needing to be subscribed
       to the mailing list.

       The web page http://www.maradns.org/ has a link to the mailing list
       archives.

    6. How do I get off the mailing list?

       Send an email to list-request@maradns.org with "unsubscribe" as the
       subject line.

    7. How do I set up reverse DNS on MaraDNS?

       Reverse DNS (sometimes called "reverse mapping") is set up by using PTR
       (pointer) records. For example, the PTR record which performs the
       reverse DNS lookup for the ip 10.2.3.4 looks like this in a CSV2 zone
       file:

           4.3.2.10.in-addr.arpa. PTR www.example.com. ~

       It is also possible, on MaraDNS 1.2.05 and more recent releases, to use
       a special "FQDN4" which automatically sets up the reverse mapping of a
       given record:

           www.example.com. FQDN6 10.2.3.4 ~

       If you wish to have a PTR (reverse DNS lookup; getting a DNS name from
       a numeric IP) record work on the internet at large, it is not a simple
       matter of just adding a record like this to a MaraDNS zonefile. One
       also needs control of the appropriate in-addr.arpa. domain.

       While it can make logical sense to contact the IP 10.11.12.13 when
       trying to get the reverse DNS lookup (fully qualified domain name) for
       a given IP, DNS servers don't do this. DNS server, instead, contact the
       root DNS servers for a given in-addr.arpa name to get the reverse DNS
       lookup, just like they do with any other record type.

       When an internet service provider is given a block of IPs, they are
       also given control of the DNS zones which allow them to control reverse
       DNS lookups for those IPs. While it is possible to obtain a domain and
       run a DNS server without the knowledge or intervention of an ISP, being
       able to control reverse DNS lookups for those IPs requires ISP
       intervention.

    8. I am on a slow network, and MaraDNS can not process recursive queries

       MaraDNS, by default, only waits two seconds for a reply from a remote
       DNS server. This default can be increased by adding a line like this in
       the mararc file:

           timeout_seconds = 5


       Note that making this too high will slow MaraDNS down when DNS servers
       are down, which is, alas, all too common on today's internet.

    9. When I try to run MaraDNS, I get a cryptic error message.

       There is usually some context of where there is a syntax error in a
       data file before the cryptic error message. For example, when there is
       a syntax error in a csv2 zone file, MaraDNS will tell you exactly at
       what point it had to terminate parsing of the zone file.

       If MaraDNS does return a cryptic error message without letting you know
       what is wrong, let me know so that I can fix the bug. MaraDNS is
       designed to be easy to use; cryptic error messages go against this
       spirit.

    10. After I start MaraDNS, I can not see the process when I run netstat
    -na

       Udp services do not have a prominent "LISTEN" when netstat is run.

       When MaraDNS is up, the relevant line in the netstat output looks like
       this: udp 0 0 127.0.0.1:53 0.0.0.0:*

       While on the topic of netstat, if you run netstat -nap as root on Linux
       and some other *nix operating systems, you can see the names of the
       processes which are providing internet services.

    11. What string library does MaraDNS use?

       MaraDNS uses its own string library, which is called the "js_string"
       library. Man pages for most of the functions in the js_string library
       are in the folder doc/man of the MaraDNS distribution

    12. Why does MaraDNS use a multi-threaded model?

       The multi-threaded model is, plain and simple, the simplest way to
       write a functioning recursive DNS server. There is a reason why
       MaraDNS, pdnsd, and BIND 9 all use the multi-threaded model.

       I am planning on improving MaraDNS' threaded model to not spawn a
       thread for each and every uncached request.

    13. I feel that XXX feature should be added to MaraDNS

       The only thing that will convince me to implement a given feature for
       MaraDNS is cold, hard cash. If you want me to keep a given feature
       proprietary, you better have lots of cold hard cash. If you're willing
       to opensource your feature, less cash should be sufficient.

       Keep in mind that both the BIND and NSD name servers were developed by
       having the programmers paid to work on the programs.  PowerDNS was
       originally commercial software with the author only reluctantly made
       GPL after seeing that the market for a commercial DNS server is very
       small. All of the other DNS servers which have been developed as
       hobbyist projects (Posadis, Pdnsd, and djbdns) are no longer being
       actively worked on by the primary developer.

       My current plans for MaraDNS are visible on the roadmap page for
       MaraDNS.

       If I see a large MaraDNS community and a strong demand for new features
       from that community, I will consider their wishes. Especially if some
       of the members of the community have large bank accounts. Should ipv6
       start to become dominant, I will update MaraDNS to have full ipv6
       support. Should some other technology come along that will require an
       update to MaraDNS for MaraDNS to continue to function as a DNS server,
       I may very well update MaraDNS to use that technology.

    14. I feel that MaraDNS should use another documentation format

       The reason that MaraDNS uses its own documentation format is to satisfy
       both the needs of translators to have a unified document format and my
       own need to use a documentation format that is simple enough to be
       readily understood and which I can add features on an as needed basis.

       The documentation format is essentially simplified HTML with some
       special tags added to meet MaraDNS' special needs.

       This gives me more flexibility to adapt the documentation format to
       changing needs. For example, when someone pointed out that it's not a
       good idea to have man pages with hi-bit characters, it was a simple
       matter to add a new HIBIT tag which allows man pages to be without hi-
       bit characters, and other document formats to retain hi-bit characters.

       Having a given program have its own documentation format is not without
       precedent; Perl uses its own "pod" documentation format.

    15. Is there any process I need to follow to add a patch to MaraDNS?

       Yes.

       Here is the procedure for making a proper patch:

       * Enter the directory that the file is in, for example
         maradns-1.2.00/server

       * Copy over the file that you wish to modify to another file name. For
         example: cp MaraDNS.c MaraDNS.c.orig

       * Edit the file in question, e.g: vi MaraDNS.c

       * After editing, do something like this:
         diff -u MaraDNS.c.orig MaraDNS.c > maradns.patch

       * Make sure the modified version compiles cleanly

       Send a patch to me in email, along with a statement that you place the
       contents of the patch under MaraDNS' BSD license. If I find that the
       patch works well, I will integrate it in to MaraDNS.

    16. Can MaraDNS act as a primary nameserver?

       Yes.

       The zoneserver program serves zones so that other DNS servers can be
       secondaries for zones which MaraDNS serves. This is a separate program
       from the maradns server, which processes both authoritative and
       recursive UDP DNS queries.

       See the DNS master document in the MaraDNS tutorial for details.

    17. Can MaraDNS act as a secondary nameserver?

       Yes.

       Please read the DNS slave document, which is part of the MaraDNS
       tutorial.

    18. What is the difference between an authoritative and a recursive DNS
    server?

       A recursive DNS server is a DNS server that is able to contact other
       DNS servers in order to resolve a given domain name label. This is the
       kind of DNS server one points to in /etc/resolve.conf

       An authoritative DNS server is a DNS server that a recursive server
       contacts in order to find out the answer to a given DNS query.

    19. The fetchzone client isn't allowing me to add certain hostnames to my
    zone

       For security reasons, MaraDNS' fetchzone client does not add records
       which are not part of the zone in question. For example, if someone has
       a zone for example.com, and this record in the zone:

       1.1.1.10.in-addr.arpa. PTR dns.example.com.

       MaraDNS will not add the record, since the record is out-of-bailiwick.
       In other words, it is a host name that does not end in .example.com.

       There are two workarounds for this issue:

       * Create a zone file for 1.1.10.in-addr.arpa., and put the PTR records
         there.

       * Use rcp, rsync, or another method to copy over the zone files in
         question.

    20. Is MaraDNS portable?

       MaraDNS is developed on a CentOS 3 and Windows XP dual boot laptop.
       MaraDNS may compile or run on other systems--there are official MaraDNS
       ports for Debian/Ubuntu, Slackware, FreeBSD, and NetBSD. Note that
       MaraDNS needs a system with a robust threading library, which some
       systems do not have.

    21. Can I use MaraDNS in Windows?

       Yes. There is both a partial mingw32 (native win32 binary) port and a
       full Cygwin port of MaraDNS; both of these ports are part of the native
       build of MaraDNS.

    22. MaraDNS freezes up after being used for a while

       If you are using MaraDNS 1.2.03.1 (or any 1.1 release, for that matter)
       on Linux, upgrade to version 1.2.03.2. There is a bug with the Linux
       kernel which causes UDP clients to freeze unless code is written to
       work around the kernel bug. This workaround was first introduced in
       MaraDNS 1.0.28 and 1.1.35 and accidently disabled in 1.2.03.1.

       If using your ISP's name servers or some other name servers which are
       not, in fact, root name servers, please make sure that you are using
       the upstream_servers dictionary variable instead of the root_servers
       dictionary variable.

       If you still see MaraDNS freeze up after making this correction, please
       send a bug report to the mailing list.

    23. What kind of Python integration does MaraDNS have

       The mararc file uses the same syntax that Python uses; in fact, Python
       can parse a properly formatted mararc file.

       There is currently no other integration with Python.

    24. Doesn't "kvar" mean "four" in Esperanto?

       Indeed, it does. However the use of "kvar" in the MaraDNS source code
       only coincidentally is an Esperanto word. "kvar" is short for "Kiwi
       variable"; a lot of the parsing code comes from the code used in the
       Kiwi spam filter project.

    25. How scalable is MaraDNS?

       MaraDNS is optimized for serving a small number of domains as quickly
       as possible. That said, MaraDNS is remarkably efficnent for serving a
       large number of domains, as long as the server MaraDNS is on has the
       memory to fit all of the domains, and as long as the startup time for
       loading a large number of domains can be worked around.

       The "big-O" or "theta" growth rates for various MaraDNS functions are
       as follows, where N is the number of authoritative host names being
       served:

       Startup time                            N
       Memory usage                            N
       Processing incoming DNS requests        1

       As can be seen, MaraDNS will process 1 or 100000 domains in the same
       amount of time, once the domain names are loaded in to memory.

    26. I am having problems setting upstream_servers

       The upstream_servers mararc variable is set thusly:

           upstream_servers["."] = "10.3.28.79, 10.2.19.83"

       Note the ["."]. The reason for this is so future versions of MaraDNS
       may have more fine-grained control over the upstream_servers and
       root_servers values.

       Note that the upstream_servers variable needs to be initialized before
       being used via upstream_servers = {} (the reason for this is so that a
       mararc file has 100% Python-compatible syntax). A complete mararc file
       that uses upstream_servers may look like this:

       ipv4_bind_addresses = "127.0.0.1"
       chroot_dir = "/etc/maradns"
       recursive_acl = "127.0.0.1/8"
       upstream_servers = {}
       upstream_servers["."] = "10.1.2.3, 10.2.4.6"

    27. Why doesn't the MaraDNS.org web page validate?

       HTML pages on the MaraDNS.org web site should validate as HTML 4.0
       Transitional. However, the CSS will not validate.

       I have designed MaraDNS' web page to be usable and as attractive as
       possible in any major browser released in the last ten years. Cross-
       browser support is more important than strict W3 validation. The reason
       why the CSS does not validate is because I need a way to make sure
       there is always a scrollbar on the web page, even if the content is not
       big enough to merit one; this is to avoid the content jumping from page
       to page. There is no standard CSS tag that lets me do this. I'm using a
       non-standard tag to enable this in Gecko (Firefox's rendering engine);
       this is enabled by default in Trident (Internet Explorer's rendering
       engine). The standards are deficient and blind adherence to them would
       result in an inferior web site.

       There are also two validation warnings generated by redefinitions which
       are needed as part of the CSS filters used to make the site attractive
       on older browsers with limited CSS support.

       On a related note, the reason why I use tables instead of CSS for some
       of the layout is because Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 and other
       browsers do not have support for the max-width CSS property. Without
       this property, the web page will not scale down correctly without using
       tables.  Additionally, tables allow a reasonably attractive header in
       browsers without CSS support.

    28. How do MX records work?

       How MX records work:

       * The mail transport agent (Sendmail, Postfix, Qmail, MS Exchange,
         etc.)  looks up the MX record for the domain

       * For each of the records returned, the MTA (mail transport agent)
         looks up the IP for the names.

       * It will choose, at random, any of the MXes with the lowest priority
         number.

       * Should that server fail, it will try another server with the same
         priority number.

       * Should all MX records with a given priority number fail, the MTA will
         try sending email to any of the MX records with the second-lowest
         priority value.

       As an aside, do not have MX records point to CNAMEs.

    29. Does MaraDNS have support for SPF?

       SPF, or sender policy framework, is method of using DNS that makes it
       more difficult to forge email. MaraDNS has full support for SPF, both
       via TXT records and, starting with MaraDNS 1.2.08, via RFC4408 SPF
       records.

       SPF configuration is beyond the scope of MaraDNS' documentation.
       However, at the time of this FAQ entry being written (June, 2006),
       information and documentation concerning SPF is available at
       http://openspf.org. The BIND examples will work in MaraDNS csv2 zone
       files as long as the double quotes (") are replaced by single quotes
       ('). For example, a SPF TXT record that looks like example.net. IN TXT
       "v=spf1 +mx a:colo.example.com/28 -all" in a BIND zone file will look
       like example.net. TXT 'v=spf1 +mx a:colo.example.com/28 -all' in a
       MaraDNS zone file. MaraDNS version 1.2.08 and higher can also make the
       corresponding SPF record, which will have the syntax example.net. SPF
       'v=spf1 +mx a:colo.example.com/28 -all'.

    30. I'm having problems resolving CNAMES I have set up.

       This is probably because you have set up what MaraDNS calls a dangling
       CNAME record.

       Let us suppose we have a CNAME record without an A record in the local
       DNS server's database, such as:

            google.example.com. CNAME www.google.com. ~

       This record, which is a CNAME record for "google.example.com", points
       to "www.google.com". Some DNS servers will recursively look up
       www.google.com, and render the above record like this:

            google.example.com. CNAME www.google.com. ~
            www.google.com. CNAME 66.102.7.104 ~

       For security reasons, MaraDNS doesn't do this. Instead, MaraDNS will
       simply output:

            google.example.com. CNAME www.google.com. ~

       Some stub resolvers will be unable to resolve google.example.com as a
       consequence.

       If you set up MaraDNS to resolve CNAMEs thusly, you will get a warning
       in your logs about having a dangling CNAME record.

       If you want to remove these warnings, add the following to your mararc
       file:

            no_cname_warnings = 1

       Information about how to get MaraDNS to resolve dangling CNAME records
       is in the tutorial file dangling.html

    I have a NS delegation, and MaraDNS is doing strange things.

       In the case of there being a NS delegation, MaraDNS handles recursive
       queries and non-recursive DNS queries differently. Basically, unless
       you use askmara with the -n option, dig with the +norecuse option, or
       nslookup with the -norec option, MaraDNS will try to recursively
       resolve the record that is delegated.

       The thinking is this: A normal recursive DNS query is usually one where
       one wants to know the final DNS output. So, if MaraDNS delegates a
       given record to another DNS server, and gets a recursive request for
       said query, MaraDNS will recursively resolve the query for you.

       For example, let us suppose we have a mararc file that looks like this:

       chroot_dir = "/etc/maradns"
       ipv4_bind_addresses = "10.1.2.3"
       chroot_dir = "/etc/maradns"
       recursive_acl = "127.0.0.1/8, 10.0.0.0/8"
       csv2 = {}
       csv2["example.com."] = "db.example.com"

       And a db.example.com file that looks like this:

       www.example.com.    10.1.2.3 ~
       joe.example.com.    NS ns.joe.example.com. ~
       ns.joe.example.com. A 10.1.2.4 ~

       Next, you are trying to find out why www.joe.example.com is not
       resolving. If you naively send a query to 10.1.2.3 for
       www.joe.example.com as askmara Awww.joe.example.com. 10.1.2.3 or as dig
       @10.1.2.3 www.joe.example.com. or as nslookup www.joe.example.com.
       10.1.2.3, you will not get any information that will help you solve the
       problem, since 10.1.2.3 will try to contact 10.1.2.4 to resolve
       www.joe.example.com.

       The solution is to run your DNS query client thusly:

       * Askmara would be run thusly:

       askmara -n Awww.joe.example.com. 10.1.2.3

       * Dig would be run thusly:

       dig +norecurse @10.1.2.3 www.joe.example.com

       * Nslookup would be run thusly:

       nslookup -norec www.joe.example.com 10.1.2.3

       This will allow you to see that packets MaraDNS actually sends to a
       recursive DNS server.

       As an aside, this particular problem will not happen if MaraDNS is run
       only as an authoritative nameserver.

    I am transferring a zone from another server, but the NS records are these
    strange "synth-ip" records.

       MaraDNS expects, in csv2 zone files, for all delegation NS records to
       be between the SOA record and the first non-NS record.

       If a zone looks like this:

       example.net. +600 soa ns1.example.net. hostmaster@example.net
       10 10800 3600 604800 1080 ~
       example.net. +600 mx 10 mail.example.net. ~
       example.net. +600 a 10.2.3.5 ~
       example.net. +600 ns ns1.example.net. ~
       example.net. +600 ns ns3.example.net. ~
       mail.example.net. +600 a 10.2.3.7 ~
       www.example.net. +600 a 10.2.3.11 ~

       Then the NS records will be "synth-ip" records.

       The zone should look like this:

       example.net. +600 soa ns1.example.net. hostmaster@example.net
       10 10800 3600 604800 1080 ~
       example.net. +600 ns ns1.example.net. ~
       example.net. +600 ns ns3.example.net. ~
       example.net. +600 mx 10 mail.example.net. ~
       example.net. +600 a 10.2.3.5 ~
       mail.example.net. +600 a 10.2.3.7 ~
       www.example.net. +600 a 10.2.3.11 ~

       This will remove the "synth-ip" records.

       To automate this process, this awk script is useful:

       fetchzone whatever.zone.foo 10.1.2.3 | awk '
       {if($3 ~ /ns/ || $3 ~ /soa/){print}
       else{a = a "\n" $0}}
       END{print a}' > zonefile.csv2

       Replace "whatever.zone.foo" with the name of the zone you are fetchin
       10.1.2.3 with the IP address of the DNS master, and zonefile.csv2 with
       the name of the zone file MaraDNS loads.

    Where is the root.hints file?

       MaraDNS, unlike BIND, does not need a complicated root.hints file in
       order to have custom root servers. In order to change the root.hints
       file, add something like this to your mararc file:

       root_servers["."] =  "131.161.247.232,"
       root_servers["."] += "208.185.249.250,"
       root_servers["."] += "66.227.42.140,"
       root_servers["."] += "66.227.42.149,"
       root_servers["."] += "65.243.92.254"

       Note that there is no "+=" in the first line, and the last line does
       not have a comma at the end. Read the recursive tutorial document for
       more information.

    Are there any plans to use autoconf to build MaraDNS?

       No. OK, let me qualify that: I won't do it unless you pay me enough
       money.

       In more detail, MaraDNS does not use autoconf for the following
       reasons:

       * Autoconf is designed to solve a problem that existed in the mid 1990s
         but does not exist today: A large number of different incompatible C
         compilers and libc implementations. These days, most systems are
         using gcc as the compiler and some version of glibc as the libc.
         There is no longer a need, for example, to figure out whether a given
         implementation of getopt() allows '--' options.  MaraDNS's
         ./configure script can be run in only a second or two; compare this
         to the 3-5 minute process autoconf's ./configure needs.

       * Autoconf leaves GPL-tained files in a program's build tree. MaraDNS
         is licensed under a BSD license that is not GPL-compatible, so
         MaraDNS can not be distributed with these GPL-licensed files.

       This leads us to the next question:

    How do I change the compiler or compile-time flags with MaraDNS' build
    process?

       To change the compiler used by MaraDNS:

       * Run the ./configure script

       * Open up the file Makefile with an editor

       * Look for a line that starts with CC

       * If there is no line that starts with CC, create one just before the
         line that starts with FLAGS

       * Change (or create) that line to look something like CC=gcc296 In this
         example, the 2.96 version of gcc is used to compile MaraDNS.

       * Note that it is important to not remove anything from this line you
         do not understand; doing so will make MaraDNS unable to compile or
         run. So, if the CC line looks like
         CC=gcc&nbsp;$(LDFLAGS)&nbsp;-DNO_FLOCK and you want to compile with
         gcc 2.96, change the line to look like
         CC=gcc296&nbsp;$(LDFLAGS)&nbsp;-DNO_FLOCK retaining the flags added
         by the configuration script.

       Changing compile-time flags is a similar process:

       * Run the ./configure script

       * Open up the file Makefile with an editor

       * Look for a line that starts with FLAGS

       * Change (or create) that line to look something like FLAGS=-O3 In this
         example, MaraDNS is compiled with the -O3 option.

       * Note that it is important to not remove anything from this line you
         do not understand; doing so will make MaraDNS unable to compile or
         run. So, if the FLAGS line looks like
         FLAGS=-O2&nbsp;-Wall&nbsp;-DSELECT_PROBLEM and you want to compile at
         optimization level three, change this line to look like
         FLAGS=-O2&nbsp;-Wall&nbsp;-DSELECT_PROBLEM retaining the flags added
         by the configuration script. -DSELECT_PROBLEM for example, is needed
         in the Linux compile or MaraDNS will have problems with freezing up.

    Will you make a package for the particular Linux distribution I am using?

       No. OK, let me qualify that: I won't do it unless you pay me enough
       money.

       There are MaraDNS packages for a number of different distributions of
       Linux and other operating systems. On the MaraDNS site, there is a
       MaraDNS package for CentOS/Red Hat Enterprise Linux available. There is
       also usually an up-to-date Slackware package available. In addition,
       there is a Debian package in the Debian packages collection, a FreeBSD
       port of MaraDNS, a Ubuntu package which is derived from the Debian
       package, and undoubtably other MaraDNS packages floating around the
       internet.

       If you wish to have a package for your particular version of Linux (or
       MacOS X or BSD or...), you can use one of the above packages as a
       starting point for making your package. For example, other RPM-based
       distributions can use the CentOS RPM package as a baseline (the .spec
       file is in the build/ directory). I can not help you with any problems
       you may encounter making this package since I do not have your
       particular version of Linux installed on my computer.

       As an aside, some of the MaraDNS packages floating around on the
       internet are out of date (*cough*, Debian, *cough*)<sup><font
       size=-2>1</font></sup>. Please make sure, that if you get a third-party
       package from the internet, the package is for either MaraDNS 1.0.41,
       MaraDNS 1.2.12.08, or MaraDNS 1.3.07.05. Older versions of MaraDNS are
       not supported.

       Footnote 1: Debian has a somewhat silly policy that, once a package is
       declared "stable", they will basically not update it unless there is a
       Bugtraq security advisory for the package in question. This policy is a
       good policy for programs made by pimply-faced 16-year-olds who don't
       know how to manage a release cycle nor a bugfix-only branch, but
       doesn't make sense for MaraDNS. As I write this, the Debian's "stable"
       version of MaraDNS is 1.2.12.04, which is about a year behind in terms
       of bugfixes.  I, annoyingly enough, get bug reports from Debian users
       telling me about bugs I have already fixed in the 1.2 branch of
       MaraDNS.

       Now, to be fair to Debian, their policies do allow me to backport
       bugfixes to the 1.2.12.04 release of MaraDNS, and the patches do get
       reviewed by somone else, which minimizes bugfixes introducing new bugs
       (Yes, I have done that), but there are not enough volunteers to review
       all of the bugfixes I have made since 1.2.12.04. So, Debian users get
       stuck with an old, buggy version of MaraDNS. The policy would work if
       there were enough volunteers to actually review all of my
       post-1.2.12.04 bugfixes, but the people who created the policy did not
       take in to account the logistics of volunteer work.

    I am using the native Windows port of MaraDNS, and some features are not
    working.

       Since Windows 32 does not have some features that *NIX OSes have, the
       native Windows port does not have all of the features of the *NIX
       version of MaraDNS. In particular, the following features are disabled:

       * ipv6 (this is actually a mingw32, not a Windows deficiency)

       * The chroot_dir mararc variable

       * The maradns_gid and maradns_uid mararc variables

       * The maxprocs mararc variable

       * The synth_soa_serial variable can not have a value of 2

       If any of the above features are desired, try compiling MaraDNS using
       Cygwin. Note that the Cygwin port of MaraDNS does not have ipv6
       support, and that while chroot_dir works in Cygwin, it does not have
       the security that the *NIX chroot() call has.

    MaraDNS isn't starting up

       This is usually caused by a syntax error in one's mararc file, or by
       another MaraDNS process already running. To see what is happening, look
       at your system log (/var/log/messages in Centos 3) to see what errors
       MaraDNS reports. If you do not know how to look at a system log, you
       can also invoke MaraDNS from the command line as root; any errors will
       be visible when starting MaraDNS.

    You make a lot of releases of MaraDNS; at our ISP/IT department, updating
    software is non-trivial.

       The number of releases seen in the changelog is not an accurate
       reflection of how often someone using a stable branch of MaraDNS will
       need to update.

       There were only three updates to the 1.0 legacy branch in 2006, and (so
       far) only two updates to the 1.0 branch in 2007. The 1.2 branch was
       updated frequently in the first half of 2006, since I felt MaraDNS 1.2
       needed some features that didn't make it in to 1.2.00. During this
       update cycle, there was always a stable bugfix-only branch of MaraDNS.

       In August of 2006, I stabilized the 1.2 branch and only five updates
       have been done since then. Unless there is a critical bug, I only will
       update the 1.2 branch approximately once every six months or so.

       I go to a great deal of effort to make sure MaraDNS releases are as
       painless to update as possible. I ensure configuration file format
       compatibility, even between major versions of MaraDNS. With the
       exception of configuration file parser bugfixes, MaraDNS 1.0
       configuration files are compatible with MaraDNS 1.2 and 1.3.

       It is impossible to make code that is bug-free or without security
       problems. This is especially true with code that runs on the public
       internet.<sup><font size=-2>1</font></sup> Code has to be updated from
       time to time. What I do in order to minimize the disruption caused by
       an update is to always have a stable bugfix-only branch of MaraDNS
       (right now I have three bugfix-only branches), and to, as much as
       possible, evenly space out the bugfix updates.

       Footnote 1: Even DJB's code has security problems. Both Qmail and
       DjbDNS have known security problems, and need to be patched before put
       on a public internet server.

BUGS
       In the unusual case of having a csv2 zone file with Macintosh-style
       newlines (as opposed to DOS or UNIX newlines), while the file will
       parse, any errors in the file will be reported as being on line 1.

       The maximum allowed number of threads is 5000.

       The system startup script included with MaraDNS assumes that the only
       MaraDNS processes running are started by the script; it stops all
       MaraDNS processes running on the server when asked to stop MaraDNS.

       When a resolver asks for an A record, and the A record is a CNAME which
       points to a list of IPs, MaraDNS' recursive resolver only returns the
       first IP listed along with the CNAME. This is somewhat worked around by
       having a CNAME record only stay in the recursive cache for 15 minutes.

       When a resolver asks for an A record, and the A record is a CNAME that
       points to another CNAME (and possibly a longer CNAME chain), while
       MaraDNS returns the correct IP (as long as the glueless level is not
       exceeded), MaraDNS will incorrectly state that the first CNAME in the
       chain directly points to the IP.

       If a NS record points to a list of IPs, and the NS record in question
       is a "glueless" record (MaraDNS had to go back to the root servers to
       find out the IP of the machine in question), MaraDNS' recursive
       resolver only uses the first listed IP as a name server.

       When MaraDNS' recursive resolver receives a "host not there" reply,
       instead of using the SOA minimum of the "host not there" reply as the
       TTL (Look at RFC1034 section 4.3.4), MaraDNS uses the TTL of the SOA
       reply.

       MaraDNS keeps referral NS records in the cache for one day instead of
       the TTL specified by the remote server.

       MaraDNS needs to use the zoneserver program to serve DNS records over
       TCP. See zoneserver(8) for usage information.

       MaraDNS does not use the zone file ("master file") format specified in
       chapter 5 of RFC1035.

       MaraDNS default behavior with star records is not RFC-compliant.  In
       more detail, if a wildcard MX record exists in the form
       "*.example.com", and there is an A record for "www.example.com", but no
       MX record for "www.example.com", the correct behavior (based on RFC1034
       section 4.3.3) is to return "no host" (nothing in the answer section,
       SOA in the authority section, 0 result code) for a MX request to
       "www.example.com".  Instead, MaraDNS returns the MX record attached to
       "*.example.com".  This can be changed by setting bind_star_handling to
       1.

       Star records (what RFC1034 calls "wildcards") can not be attached to NS
       records.

       MaraDNS recursive resolver treats any TTL shorter than min_ttl seconds
       (min_ttl_cname seconds when the record is a CNAME record) as if the TTL
       in question was min_ttl (or min_ttl_cname) seconds long when
       determining when to expire a record from MaraDNS' cache.

       TTLs which are shorter than 20 seconds long are given a TTL of 20
       seconds; TTLs which are more than 63072000 (2 years) long are given a
       TTL of 2 years.

       MaraDNS' recursive resolver's method of deleting not recently accessed
       records from the cache when the cache starts to fill up can deleted
       records from the cache before they expire. Some people consider this
       undesirable behavior; I feel it is necessary behavior if one wishes to
       place a limit on the memory resources a DNS server may use.

       MaraDNS' recursive resolver stops resolving when it finds an answer in
       the AR section. This is a problem in the case where a given host name
       and IP is registered with the root name servers, and the registered IP
       is out of date. When this happens, a server "closer" to the root server
       will give an out-of-date IP, even though the authoritative DNS servers
       for the host in question have the correct IP. Note that resolving this
       will result in increased DNS traffic.

       MaraDNS, like every other known DNS implementation, only supports a
       QDCOUNT of 0 or 1.

       MaraDNS spawns a new thread for every single recursive DNS request when
       the data in question is not in MaraDNS' cache; this makes MaraDNS an
       excellent stress tester for pthread implementations.  Many pthread
       implementations can not handle this kind of load; symptoms include high
       memory usage and termination of the MaraDNS process.

       MaraDNS does not handle the case of a glueless in-bailiwick NS referral
       very gracefully; this usually causes the zone pointed to by the
       offending NS record to be unreachable by MaraDNS, even if other DNS
       servers for the domain have correct NS referrals.

UNIMPLEMENTED FEATURES
       These are features which will not be implemented in the 1.2 release of
       MaraDNS:

       MaraDNS does not have a disk-based caching scheme for authoritative
       zones.

       MaraDNS' UDP server only loads zone files while MaraDNS is first
       started.  UDP Zone information can only be updated by stopping MaraDNS,
       and restarting MaraDNS again. Note that TCP zone files are loaded from
       the filesystem at the time the client requests a zone.

       MaraDNS does not have support for allowing given host names to only
       resolve for a limited range of IPs querying the DNS server, or for host
       names to resolve differently, depending on the IP querying the host
       name.

       MaraDNS only has limited authoritative-only support for IPv6.

       MaraDNS only allows wildcards at the beginning or end of a host name.
       E.g. names with wildcards like "foo.*.example.com". "www.*" will work,
       however, if a default zonefile is set up.

       MaraDNS does not have support for MRTG or any other SNMP-based logging
       mechanism.

LEGAL DISCLAIMER
       THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHORS ''AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR
       IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED
       WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE
       DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR
       ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
       DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS
       OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION)
       HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT,
       STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING
       IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE
       POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

AUTHORS
       Sam Trenholme (http://www.samiam.org) is responsible for this man page.

       MaraDNS is written by me, Sam Trenholme, with a little help from my
       friends. Naturally, all errors in MaraDNS are my own (but read the
       disclaimer above).

       Here is a partial list of people who have provided assistance:

       Floh has generously set up a FreeBSD 4, FreeBSD 6, and Mac OS X system
       so that I can port MaraDNS to more platforms.

       Albert Lee has provided countless bug reports, and, nicely enough,
       patches to fix said bugs. He has also made improvements to the code in
       the tcp "zoneserver".

       Franky Van Liedekerke has provided much invaluable assistance. As just
       one example, he provided invaluable assistance in getting MaraDNS to
       compile on Solaris. In addition, he has provided much valuable SQA
       help.

       Christian Kurz, who has provided invaluable bug reports, especially
       when I had to re-implement the core hashing algorithm.

       Remmy, who is providing both the web space and a mailing list for
       maradns.org.

       Phil Homewood, who provided invaluable assistance with finding and
       fixing bugs in the authoritative portion of the MaraDNS server. He
       helped me plug memory leaks, find uninitialized variables being used,
       and found a number of bugs I was unable to find.

       Albert Prats kindly provided Spanish translations for various text
       files.

       Shin Zukeran provided a patch to recursive.c which properly makes a
       normal null-terminated string from a js_string object, to send as an
       argument to open() so we can get the rijndael key for the PRNG.

       D Richard Felker III has provided invaluable bug reports. By looking at
       his bug reports, I have been able to hunt down and fix many problems
       that the recursive nameserver had, in addition to at least one problem
       with the authoritative nameserver.

       Ole Tange has also given me many valuable MaraDNS bug reports.

       Florin Iucha provided a tip in the FAQ for how to compile MaraDNS on
       OpenBSD.

       Roy Arends (one of the BIND developers, as it turns out) found a
       serious security problem with MaraDNS, where MaraDNS would answer
       answers, and pointed it out to me.

       Code used as the basis for the psudo-random-number generator was
       written by Vincent Rijmen, Antoon Bosselaers, and Paulo Barreto. I
       appreciate these programmers making the code public domain, which is
       the only license under which I can add code to MaraDNS under.

       Ross Johnson and others have made a Win32 port of the Pthreads library;
       this has made a native win32 port of MaraDNS possible.

       I also appreciate the work of Dr. Brian Gladman and Fritz Schneider,
       who have both written independent implementations of AES from which I
       obtained test vectors. With the help of their hard work, I was able to
       discover a subtle security problem that previous releases of MaraDNS
       had.




MARADNS                          January 2002                       MARADNS(8)
