Service/Nameservers

< Service
Revision as of 05:08, 9 October 2010 by Bernie (talk | contribs)

Hostmasters

To request changes to DNS records, contact <hostmaster AT sugarlabs DOT org>

Current hostmasters are:

Registered nameservers

The following nameservers are currently registered in whois records for our domains:

hostname aka location IPv4 IPv6
ns1.sugarlabs.org lightwave FSF, Boston, USA 140.186.70.102 2002:8cba:4666::1
ns2.sugarlabs.net sunjammer FSF, Boston, USA 140.186.70.53 2002:8cba:4635::1
ns1.codewiz.org trinity Develer, Firenze, Italy 83.149.158.210 2002:5395:9ed2::1

Editing zone data

We use distributed version control and admin scripts to arbitrate edits to the zone files and nameserver configurations. DO NOT EDIT THESE FILES DIRECTLY ON THE MASTER NAMESERVER, ANY CHANGES WILL BE OVERWRITTEN.

Checkout nameserver config

Checkout the git repository containing the DNS zone data:

git clone lightwave.sugarlabs.org:/var/lib/bind/etc/bind ns

Do not checkout the repository as root. Your user on Machine:lightwave needs to be in group hostmaster.

In order to make changes, you will also need the private keys for your domain. For security reasons, these are not kept on the master DNS itself. Ask one of the other hostmasters for a copy and put it in the keys/ directory alongside the public keys.

Edit zone data

Guidelines for editing zones:

  • Please keep the zone files tidy, by following indentation style
  • Add comments as needed to describe obscure records in the zone files
  • Remember to keep reverse zones always up to date
  • Bump the serials after each update!

Push changes back to master nameserver

After you edited the sugarlabs.org zone, execute this script to re-sign the zone and push your changes to the master DNS:

./update-sugarlabs

The script does:

* re-sign the zone with the DNSSEC keys
* commit your changes
* push the commit to the remote repository

The post-receive hook to automate the rest of the procedure:

* send a notification email to systems-logs@;
* checkout your changes to the bind configuration directory;
* make BIND reload its configuration;
* watch BIND's log file to ensure slaves are actually transferring the changed zones.

Implementation details

  • We use a detached working directory to allow the automatic checkout to work (see post-receive hook below). The git repository is in /var/lib/bind/etc/bind.git and the working directory lives in /var/lib/bind/etc/bind. /etc/bind is a symlink to the working directory (/var/lib/bind/etc/bind).
  • The git config file is as follows:
[core]
       repositoryformatversion = 0
       filemode = true
       bare = false
       sharedRepository = true
       logallrefupdates = true
       worktree = /etc/bind
[receive]
       denycurrentbranch = ignore

[hooks]
       mailinglist = systems-logs@...
       emailprefix = "[DNS] "
       showrev = "git show -C %s; echo"
  • /var/lib/bind/etc/bind.git/description contains the repository description "Sugar Labs DNS zone data"
  • We use a post-receive hook to checkout the zones to the local sandbox and make BIND reload them:
#!/bin/bash
/bin/bash /usr/share/doc/git-core/contrib/hooks/post-receive-email
git checkout -f
tail -n0 -f /var/log/daemon.log &
/etc/init.d/bind9 reload
sleep 3