This is the DNS server powering the NTP Pool system and other similar services. It supersedes the pgeodns server.

If you already have go installed, just run go get to install the Go dependencies.

You will also need the GeoIP C library, on RedHat derived systems that's yum install geoip-devel.

If you don't have Go installed the easiest way to build geodns from source is to download Go from https://code.google.com/p/go/downloads/list and untar'ing it in /usr/local/go and then run the following from a regular user account:

export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/go/bin
export GOPATH=~/go
go get github.com/abh/geodns
cd ~/go/src/github.com/abh/geodns
go test
go build

There's a sample configuration file in dns/example.com.json. This is currently derived from the test.example.com data used for unit tests and not an example of a "best practices" configuration.

For testing there's also a bigger test file at:

mkdir -p dns
curl -o dns/test.ntppool.org.json https://tmp.askask.com/2012/08/dns/ntppool.org.json.big

go run *.go -log -interface 127.1 -port 5053

or if you already built geodns, then ./geodns ....

To test the responses run

dig -t a test.example.com @127.1 -p 5053

geodns runs a WebSocket server on port 8053 that outputs various performance metrics, see monitor.go for details.

Except for NS records all records can have a 'weight' assigned. If any records of a particular type for a particular name have a weight, the system will return the "max_hosts" records (default 2)

In the configuration file the whole zone is a big hash (associative array). At the top level you can (optionally) set some options with the keys serial, ttl and max_hosts.

The actual zone data (dns records) is in a hash under the key "data". The keys in the hash are hostnames and the value for each hostname is yet another hash where the keys are record types (lowercase) and the values an array of records.

For example to setup an MX record at the zone apex and then have a different A record for users in Europe than anywhere else, use:

{
    "serial": 1,
    "data": {
        "": { "mx": { "mx": "mail.example.com", "preference": 10 } },
        "mail": { "a": [ ["192.168.0.1", 100], ["192.168.10.1", 50] ] },
        "mail.europe": { "a": [ ["192.168.255.1", 0] ] },
        "smtp": { "alias": "mail" }
    }
}

The configuration files are automatically reloaded when they're updated. If a file can't be read (invalid JSON, for example) the previous configuration for that zone will be kept.

Each record has the format of a short array with the first element being the IP address and the second the weight.

{ "a": [ [ "192.168.0.1", 10], ["192.168.2.1", 5] ] }

Same format as A records (except the record type is "aaaa").

The target will have the current zone name appended if it's not a FQDN (since v2.2.0).

{ "cname": "target.example.com." } { "cname": "www" }

{ "mx": "foo.example.com" }

Internally resolved cname, of sorts. Only works internally in a zone.

{ "alias": "foo" }