How to install djbdns local caching DNS server on
Debian Lenny Linux
You might wonder why somebody would choose to install
http://cr.yp.to/djbdns.html djbdns in favour of the much
more popular and established
bind name server.
Well I personally have the following major concernes, when I do the
conscious choice to install djbdns.
- DjbDNS is fast caching DNS, according to some online tests it is
sometimes at least twice faster in resolving addresses compared to
bind.
- Djbdns caching server is easy to set up
- DjbDNS is Secure. It's notable that Dan Bernstein the author of
djbdns is one of the most honoured security specialists and hackers
out there. Dan Bernstein is also the author of the
qmail email server which is currently
considered the most secure MTA in the world.
- DjbDNS is small in size compared to bind, takes less system
resources (though this is not a crucial difference).
- DjbDNS occupies less system memory than bind
1. Install DjbDNS via apt-get
debian-server:~# apt-get install djbdns
This will also install daemontools - which will instlal daemontools
and the daemontools-run package which will add necessery entries to
/etc/inittab in order to enable service supervision through
daemontools.
2. Add Necessery users for the djbdns local caching server to be
ready to launch
debian-server:~# groupadd dnscache
debian-server:~# useradd -g dnscache dnscache
debian-server:~# useradd -g dnscache dnslog
debian-server:~# dnscache-conf dnscache dnslog
/var/dnscache
3. Configure and install djbdns local caching server files
instance
debian-server:~# dnscache-conf dnscache dnslog
/var/dnscache
4. Last but not least it's necessery to setup dnscache to start
up automatically via daemontools's svscanboot program
debian-server:~# ln -s /var/dnscache
/etc/service
If you want to further dig into the nice djbdns caching linux/bsd
server then be sure to
checkout djbdnksrocks's
website
Now to start using the newly configured DNS caching server on
localhost add to your
/etc/resolv.conf
echo 'nameserver 127.0.0.1' >>
/etc/resolv.conf