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Simon Kelley9e4abcb2004-01-22 19:47:41 +0000[diff] [blame]1<HTML>
2<HEAD>
3<TITLE> Dnsmasq - a DNS forwarder for NAT firewalls.</TITLE>
4</HEAD>
5<BODY BGCOLOR="WHITE">
6<H1 ALIGN=center>Dnsmasq</H1>
7Dnsmasq is lightweight, easy to configure DNS forwarder and DHCP
8 server. It is designed to provide DNS and, optionally, DHCP, to a
9 small network. It can serve the names of local machines which are
10 not in the global DNS. The DHCP server integrates with the DNS
11 server and allows machines with DHCP-allocated addresses
12 to appear in the DNS with names configured either in each host or
13 in a central configuration file. Dnsmasq supports static and dynamic
14 DHCP leases and BOOTP for network booting of diskless machines.
15<P>
16 Dnsmasq is targeted at home networks using NAT and
17connected to the internet via a modem, cable-modem or ADSL
18connection but would be a good choice for any small network where low
19resource use and ease of configuration are important.
20<P>
Simon Kelleyfeba5c12004-07-27 20:28:58 +0100[diff] [blame]21Supported platforms include Linux (with glibc and uclibc), *BSD and
22Mac OS X.
Simon Kelleyde379512004-06-22 20:23:33 +0100[diff] [blame]23Dnsmasq is included in at least the following Linux distributions:
24Gentoo, Debian, Slackware, Suse,
Simon Kelleyfeba5c12004-07-27 20:28:58 +0100[diff] [blame]25Smoothwall, IP-Cop, floppyfw, Firebox, LEAF, Freesco, CoyoteLinux and
Simon Kelley26128d22004-11-14 16:43:54 +0000[diff] [blame^]26Clarkconnect. It is also available as a FreeBSD port and is used in
27Linksys wireless routers and the m0n0wall project.
Simon Kelley9e4abcb2004-01-22 19:47:41 +0000[diff] [blame]28<P>
29Dnsmasq provides the following features:
30<DIR>
31
32<LI>
33The DNS configuration of machines behind the firewall is simple and
34doesn't depend on the details of the ISP's dns servers
35<LI>
36Clients which try to do DNS lookups while a modem link to the
37internet is down will time out immediately.
38</LI>
39<LI>
40Dnsmasq will serve names from the /etc/hosts file on the firewall
41machine: If the names of local machines are there, then they can all
42be addressed without having to maintain /etc/hosts on each machine.
43</LI>
44<LI>
Simon Kelley26128d22004-11-14 16:43:54 +0000[diff] [blame^]45The integrated DHCP server supports static and dynamic DHCP leases and
46multiple networks and IP ranges. It works across BOOTP relays and
47supports DHCP options including RFC3397 DNS search lists.
48Machines which are configured by DHCP have their names automatically
49included in the DNS and the names can specified by each machine or
50centrally by associating a name with a MAC address in the dnsmasq
51config file.
Simon Kelley9e4abcb2004-01-22 19:47:41 +0000[diff] [blame]52</LI>
53<LI>
54Dnsmasq caches internet addresses (A records and AAAA records) and address-to-name
55mappings (PTR records), reducing the load on upstream servers and
Simon Kelley26128d22004-11-14 16:43:54 +0000[diff] [blame^]56improving performance (especially on modem connections).
Simon Kelley9e4abcb2004-01-22 19:47:41 +0000[diff] [blame]57</LI>
58<LI>
59Dnsmasq can be configured to automatically pick up the addresses of
60it's upstream nameservers from ppp or dhcp configuration. It will
61automatically reload this information if it changes. This facility
62will be of particular interest to maintainers of Linux firewall
63distributions since it allows dns configuration to be made automatic.
64</LI>
65<LI>
66On IPv6-enabled boxes, dnsmasq can both talk to upstream servers via IPv6
67and offer DNS service via IPv6. On dual-stack (IPv4 and IPv6) boxes it talks
68both protocols and can even act as IPv6-to-IPv4 or IPv4-to-IPv6 forwarder.
69</LI>
70<LI>
71Dnsmasq can be configured to send queries for certain domains to
72upstream servers handling only those domains. This makes integration
73with private DNS systems easy.
74</LI>
75<LI>
Simon Kelley26128d22004-11-14 16:43:54 +0000[diff] [blame^]76Dnsmasq supports MX records and can be configured to return MX records
77for any or all local machines.
Simon Kelley9e4abcb2004-01-22 19:47:41 +0000[diff] [blame]78</LI>
79</DIR>
80
81<H2>Download.</H2>
82
Simon Kelleyde379512004-06-22 20:23:33 +0100[diff] [blame]83<A HREF="http://www.thekelleys.org.uk/dnsmasq/"> Download</A> dnsmasq here.
Simon Kelley9e4abcb2004-01-22 19:47:41 +0000[diff] [blame]84The tarball includes this documentation, source, manpage and control files for building .rpms.
85There are also pre-built i386 .rpms, and a
86<A HREF="CHANGELOG"> CHANGELOG</A>.
87Dnsmasq is part of the Debian distribution, it can be downloaded from
88<A HREF="http://ftp.debian.org/debian/pool/main/d/dnsmasq/"> here</A> or installed using <TT>apt</TT>.
89
90
91<H2>Building rpms.</H2>
92Assuming you have the relevant tools installed, you can rebuild .rpms simply by running (as root)
93
94<PRE>
95rpmbuild -ta dnsmasq-xxx.tar.gz
96</PRE>
97
98Note for Suse users: you will need to re-compress the tar file as
99bzip2 before building using the commands
100<PRE>
101gunzip dnsmasq-xxx.tar.gz
102bzip2 dnsmasq-zzz.tar
103</PRE>
104
105<H2>Links.</H2>
Simon Kelleydfa666f2004-08-02 18:27:27 +0100[diff] [blame]106Ulrich Ivens has a nice HOWTO in German on installing dnsmasq at <A
107HREF="http://howto.linux-hardware-shop.de/dnsmasq.html">http://howto.linux-hardware-shop.de/dnsmasq.html</A>
108and 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>
Simon Kelley26128d22004-11-14 16:43:54 +0000[diff] [blame^]109There is a good article about dnsmasq at <A
110HREF="http://www.enterprisenetworkingplanet.com/netos/article.php/3377351">http://www.enterprisenetworkingplanet.com/netos/article.php/3377351</A>
Simon Kelley9e4abcb2004-01-22 19:47:41 +0000[diff] [blame]111
112<H2>License.</H2>
113Dnsmasq is distributed under the GPL. See the file COPYING in the distribution
114for details.
115
116<H2>Contact.</H2>
Simon Kelley26128d22004-11-14 16:43:54 +0000[diff] [blame^]117There is a dnsmasq mailing list at <A
118HREF="http://lists.thekelleys.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/dnsmasq-discuss">
119http://lists.thekelleys.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/dnsmasq-discuss</A> which should be the
120first location for queries, bugreports, suggestions etc.
121Dnsmasq was written by Simon Kelley. You can contact me at <A
122HREF="mailto:simon@thekelleys.org.uk">simon@thekelleys.org.uk</A>.
Simon Kelley9e4abcb2004-01-22 19:47:41 +0000[diff] [blame]123</BODY>
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