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13. I feel that XXX feature should be added to MaraDNS
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There are currently no plans to implement new features in MaraDNS. The
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reason for this is because, bottom line, MaraDNS has failed to make my
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resume impressive enough for me to easily get a job in today's job market.
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Both the BIND and NSD name servers were developed by having the
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programmers paid to work on the programs. PowerDNS was originally
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commercial software with the author only reluctantly made GPL after seeing
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that the market for a commercial DNS server is very small. All of the
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other DNS servers which have been developed as hobbyist projects (Posadis,
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Pdnsd, and djbdns) are no longer being actively worked on by the primary
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If I were to work on MaraDNS again, it will be a complete rewrite in C++;
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if I can get C++ on my resume, I may be able to get a job more easily.
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Like anything else, this is not absolute. For example, if I see a large
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MaraDNS community and a strong demand for new features from that
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community, I will change my mind. Should ipv6 start to become dominant, I
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will update MaraDNS to have full ipv6 support. Should some other
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technology come along that will require an update to MaraDNS for MaraDNS
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to continue to function as a DNS server, I may update MaraDNS to use that
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The only thing that will convince me to implement a given feature for
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MaraDNS is cold, hard cash. If you want me to keep a given feature
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proprietary, you better have lots of cold hard cash. If you're willing to
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opensource your feature, less cash should be sufficient.
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Keep in mind that both the BIND and NSD name servers were developed by
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having the programmers paid to work on the programs. PowerDNS was
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originally commercial software with the author only reluctantly made GPL
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after seeing that the market for a commercial DNS server is very small.
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All of the other DNS servers which have been developed as hobbyist
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projects (Posadis, Pdnsd, and djbdns) are no longer being actively worked
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on by the primary developer.
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I plan on someday adding standards-compliant BIND zone file support. After
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that, I may even add real DNS slave support.
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If I see a large MaraDNS community and a strong demand for new features
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from that community, I will consider their wishes. Especially if some of
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the members of the community have large bank accounts. Should ipv6 start
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to become dominant, I will update MaraDNS to have full ipv6 support.
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Should some other technology come along that will require an update to
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MaraDNS for MaraDNS to continue to function as a DNS server, I may very
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well update MaraDNS to use that technology.
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14. I feel that MaraDNS should use another documentation format
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no_cname_warnings = 1
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Information about how to get MaraDNS to resolve dangling CNAME records is
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in the tutorial file dangling.html
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in the tutorial file dangling.html
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I have a NS delegation, and MaraDNS is doing strange things.
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In the case of there being a NS delegation, MaraDNS handles recursive
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queries and non-recursive DNS queries differently. Basically, unless you
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use askmara with the -n option, dig with the +norecuse option, or nslookup
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with the -norec option, MaraDNS will try to recursively resolve the record
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The thinking is this: A normal recursive DNS query is usually one where
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one wants to know the final DNS output. So, if MaraDNS delegates a given
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record to another DNS server, and gets a recursive request for said query,
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MaraDNS will recursively resolve the query for you.
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For example, let us suppose we have a mararc file that looks like this:
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chroot_dir = "/etc/maradns"
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ipv4_bind_addresses = "10.1.2.3"
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chroot_dir = "/etc/maradns"
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recursive_acl = "127.0.0.1/8, 10.0.0.0/8"
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csv2["example.com."] = "db.example.com"
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And a db.example.com file that looks like this:
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www.example.com. 10.1.2.3
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joe.example.com. NS ns.joe.example.com.
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ns.joe.example.com. A 10.1.2.4
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Next, you are trying to find out why www.joe.example.com is not resolving.
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If you naively send a query to 10.1.2.3 for www.joe.example.com as askmara
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Awww.joe.example.com. 10.1.2.3 or as dig @10.1.2.3 www.joe.example.com. or
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as nslookup www.joe.example.com. 10.1.2.3, you will not get any
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information that will help you solve the problem, since 10.1.2.3 will try
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to contact 10.1.2.4 to resolve www.joe.example.com.
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The solution is to run your DNS query client thusly:
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* Askmara would be run thusly:
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askmara -n Awww.joe.example.com. 10.1.2.3
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* Dig would be run thusly:
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dig +norecurse @10.1.2.3 www.joe.example.com
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* Nslookup would be run thusly:
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nslookup -norec www.joe.example.com 10.1.2.3
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This will allow you to see that packets MaraDNS actually sends to a
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recursive DNS server.
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As an aside, this particular problem will not happen if MaraDNS is run
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only as an authoritative nameserver.
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newlines (as opposed to DOS or UNIX newlines), while the file will parse,
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any errors in the file will be reported as being on line 1.
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The maximum allowed number of threads is 125; this is a hard limit because
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there may be problems with some pthreads implementations causing MaraDNS
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to hang if this number is higher.
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The maximum allowed number of threads is 5000.
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The system startup script included with MaraDNS assumes that the only
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MaraDNS processes running are started by the script; it stops all MaraDNS
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697
MaraDNS does not use the zone file ("master file") format specified in
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698
chapter 5 of RFC1035.
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If a wildcard MX record exists in the form "*.example.com", and there is
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an A record for "www.example.com", but no MX record for "www.example.com",
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the correct behavior (based on RFC1034 S4.3.3) is to return "no host"
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(nothing in the answer section, SOA in the authority section, 0 result
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code) for a MX request to "www.example.com". Instead, MaraDNS returns the
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MX record attached to "*.example.com".
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MaraDNS default behavior with star records is not RFC-compliant. In more
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detail, if a wildcard MX record exists in the form "*.example.com", and
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there is an A record for "www.example.com", but no MX record for
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"www.example.com", the correct behavior (based on RFC1034 S4.3.3) is to
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return "no host" (nothing in the answer section, SOA in the authority
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section, 0 result code) for a MX request to "www.example.com". Instead,
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MaraDNS returns the MX record attached to "*.example.com". This can be
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changed by setting bind_star_handling to 1.
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709
Star records (what RFC1034 calls "wildcards") can not be attached to NS
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735
MaraDNS, like every other known DNS implementation, only supports a
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736
QDCOUNT of 0 or 1.
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MaraDNS does not send more than one DNS packet to a given DNS server when
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processing a DNS request; this is not a serious problem because most
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client implementations send multiple DNS packets to a recurisve DNS server
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when processing a DNS request.
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MaraDNS spawns a new thread for every single recursive DNS request when
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739
the data in question is not in MaraDNS' cache; this makes MaraDNS an
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excellent stress tester for pthread implementations. Many pthread
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MaraDNS only has limited authoritative-only support for IPv6.
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MaraDNS generally does not support any DNS features which are not present
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in RFC1034 and RFC1035. The exceptions are the ability to decompress some
718
RRs not in RFC1035, and zone file support for AAAA records (RFC 1886) and
719
SRV records (RFC 2052).
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MaraDNS only allows wildcards at the beginning or end of a host name. E.g.
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names with wildcards like "foo.*.example.com". "www.*" will work, however,
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if a default zonefile is set up.
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806
example, he provided invaluable assistance in getting MaraDNS to compile
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807
on Solaris. In addition, he has provided much valuable SQA help.
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Thomas Seyrat has provided French translations of the MaraDNS
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809
Christian Kurz, who has provided invaluable bug reports, especially when I
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810
had to re-implement the core hashing algorithm.
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these programmers making the code public domain, which is the only license
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under which I can add code to MaraDNS under.
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Ross Johnson and others have made a Win32 port of the Pthreads library;
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this has made a native win32 port of MaraDNS possible.
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I also appreciate the work of Dr. Brian Gladman and Fritz Schneider, who
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have both written independent implementations of AES from which I obtained
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test vectors. With the help of their hard work, I was able to discover a
added
removed
doc/en/text/man.maradns.txt
