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<TITLE> Dnsmasq - a DNS forwarder for NAT firewalls.</TITLE>
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<H1 ALIGN=center>Dnsmasq</H1> 
Dnsmasq is a lightweight, easy to configure DNS forwarder and DHCP
 server. It is designed to provide DNS and, optionally, DHCP, to a 
 small network. It can serve the names of local machines which are 
 not in the global DNS. The DHCP server integrates with the DNS 
 server and allows machines with DHCP-allocated addresses
 to appear in the DNS with names configured either in each host or
 in a central configuration file. Dnsmasq supports static and dynamic 
 DHCP leases and BOOTP for network booting of diskless machines.
<P>
 Dnsmasq is targeted at home networks using NAT and 
connected to the internet via a modem, cable-modem or ADSL
connection but would be a good choice for any small network where low
resource use and ease of configuration are important. 
<P>
Supported platforms include Linux (with glibc and uclibc), *BSD and
Mac OS X.
Dnsmasq is included in at least the following Linux distributions:
Gentoo, Debian, Slackware, Suse, 
Smoothwall, IP-Cop, floppyfw, Firebox, LEAF, Freesco, fli4l, CoyoteLinux and
Clarkconnect. It is also available as a FreeBSD port and is used in
Linksys wireless routers and the m0n0wall project.
<P>
Dnsmasq provides the following features:
<DIR>

<LI> 
The DNS configuration of machines behind the firewall is simple and
doesn't depend on the details of the ISP's dns servers
<LI>
Clients which try to do DNS lookups while  a modem link to the
internet is down will time out immediately.
</LI>
<LI>
Dnsmasq will serve names from the /etc/hosts file on the firewall
machine: If the names of local machines are there, then they can all
be addressed without having to maintain /etc/hosts on each machine.
</LI>
<LI>
The integrated DHCP server supports static and dynamic DHCP leases and
multiple networks and IP ranges. It works across BOOTP relays and
supports DHCP options including RFC3397 DNS search lists.
Machines which are configured by DHCP have their names automatically 
included in the DNS and the names can specified by each machine or
centrally by associating a name with a MAC address in the dnsmasq
config file.
</LI>
<LI>
Dnsmasq caches internet addresses (A records and AAAA records) and address-to-name
mappings (PTR records), reducing the load on upstream servers and
improving performance (especially on modem connections). 
</LI>
<LI>
Dnsmasq can be configured to automatically pick up the addresses of
it's upstream nameservers from ppp or dhcp configuration. It will
automatically reload this information if it changes. This facility
will be of particular interest to maintainers of Linux firewall
distributions since it allows dns configuration to be made automatic.
</LI>
<LI>
On IPv6-enabled boxes, dnsmasq can both talk to upstream servers via IPv6 
and offer DNS service via IPv6. On dual-stack (IPv4 and IPv6) boxes it talks
both protocols and can even act as IPv6-to-IPv4 or IPv4-to-IPv6 forwarder.
</LI>
<LI>
Dnsmasq can be configured to send queries for certain domains to
upstream servers handling only those domains. This makes integration
with private DNS systems easy.
</LI>
<LI>
Dnsmasq supports MX records and can be configured to return MX records
for any or all local machines.
</LI>
</DIR>

<H2>Download.</H2>

<A HREF="http://www.thekelleys.org.uk/dnsmasq/"> Download</A> dnsmasq here. 
The tarball includes this documentation, source, manpage and control files for building .rpms.
There are also pre-built i386 .rpms, and a 
<A HREF="CHANGELOG"> CHANGELOG</A>.
Dnsmasq is part of the Debian distribution, it can be downloaded from 
<A HREF="http://ftp.debian.org/debian/pool/main/d/dnsmasq/"> here</A> or installed using <TT>apt</TT>.


<H2>Building rpms.</H2>
Assuming you have the relevant tools installed, you can rebuild .rpms simply by running (as root)

<PRE>
rpmbuild -ta dnsmasq-xxx.tar.gz
</PRE>

Note for Suse users: you will need to re-compress the tar file as
bzip2 before building using the commands
<PRE>
gunzip dnsmasq-xxx.tar.gz
bzip2 dnsmasq-zzz.tar
</PRE>

<H2>Links.</H2>
There is an article in German on dnsmasq at <A
HREF="http://www.linuxnetmag.com/de/issue7/m7dnsmasq1.html">http://www.linuxnetmag.com/de/issue7/m7dnsmasq1.html</A>
and Damien Raude-Morvan has one in French at <A HREF="http://www.drazzib.com/docs-dnsmasq.html">http://www.drazzib.com/docs-dnsmasq.html</A>
There is a good article about dnsmasq at <A
HREF="http://www.enterprisenetworkingplanet.com/netos/article.php/3377351">http://www.enterprisenetworkingplanet.com/netos/article.php/3377351</A>
and Ilya Evseev has an article in Russian about dnsmasq to be found at <A HREF="http://ilya-evseev.narod.ru/articles/dnsmasq"> http://ilya-evseev.narod.ru/articles/dnsmasq</A>
<H2>License.</H2>
Dnsmasq is distributed under the GPL. See the file COPYING in the distribution 
for details.

<H2>Contact.</H2>
There is a dnsmasq mailing list at <A
HREF="http://lists.thekelleys.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/dnsmasq-discuss">
http://lists.thekelleys.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/dnsmasq-discuss</A> which should be the
first location for queries, bugreports, suggestions etc.
Dnsmasq was written by Simon Kelley. You can contact me at <A
HREF="mailto:simon@thekelleys.org.uk">simon@thekelleys.org.uk</A>.
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