The generic SQL backends (like gmysql, gpgsql and godbc) are backends with easily configurable SQL statements, allowing you to graft PowerDNS on any SQL database of your choosing. Because all database schemas will be different, a generic backend is needed to cover all needs.
Warning
Host names and the MNAME of a SOA records are NEVER terminated with a ‘.’ in PowerDNS storage! If a trailing ‘.’ is present it will inevitably cause problems, problems that may be hard to debug.
Note
A root zone or record should have a name of ‘.’ (no quotes). This is the only exception to the ‘no terminating dot in SQL storage’ rule.
All domains in the generic SQL backends have a ‘type’ field that describes the DNS Modes of Operation.
To add a domain, issue the following:
INSERT INTO domains (name, type) VALUES ('example.com', 'NATIVE');
The records table can now be filled by with the domain_id set to the id of the domains table row just inserted.
These backends are fully slave capable. To become a slave of the ‘example.com’ domain, execute this:
INSERT INTO domains (name, master, type) VALUES ('example.com', '198.51.100.6', 'SLAVE');
And wait a while for PowerDNS to pick up the addition - which happens within one minute (this is determined by the slave-cycle-interval setting). There is no need to inform PowerDNS that a new domain was added. Typical output is:
Apr 09 13:34:29 All slave domains are fresh
Apr 09 13:35:29 1 slave domain needs checking
Apr 09 13:35:29 Domain example.com is stale, master serial 1, our serial 0
Apr 09 13:35:30 [gPgSQLBackend] Connected to database
Apr 09 13:35:30 AXFR started for 'example.com'
Apr 09 13:35:30 AXFR done for 'example.com'
Apr 09 13:35:30 [gPgSQLBackend] Closing connection
From now on, PowerDNS is authoritative for the ‘example.com’ zone and will respond accordingly for queries within that zone.
Periodically, PowerDNS schedules checks to see if domains are still fresh. The default slave-cycle-interval is 60 seconds, large installations may need to raise this value. Once a domain has been checked, it will not be checked before its SOA refresh timer has expired. Domains whose status is unknown get checked every 60 seconds by default.
PowerDNS has support for multiple masters per zone, separate master IP addresses by commas:
INSERT INTO domains (name, master, type) VALUES ('example.com', '198.51.100.6, 2001:0DB8:15:4AF::4', 'SLAVE');
To configure a supermaster with IP address 203.0.113.53 which lists this installation as ‘autoslave.example.com’, issue the following:
INSERT INTO supermasters VALUES ('203.0.113.53', 'autoslave.example.com', 'internal');
From now on, valid notifies from 203.0.113.53 that list a NS record containing ‘autoslave.example.com’ will lead to the provisioning of a slave domain under the account ‘internal’. See Supermaster: automatic provisioning of slaves for details.
The generic SQL backend is fully master capable with automatic discovery of serial changes. Raising the serial number of a domain suffices to trigger PowerDNS to send out notifications. To configure a domain for master operation instead of the default native replication, issue:
INSERT INTO domains (name, type) VALUES ('example.com', 'MASTER');
Make sure that the assigned id in the domains table matches the domain_id field in the records table!
PowerDNS understands the notion of disabled records. They are marked by
setting “disabled” to 1 (for PostgreSQL: true). By extension,
when the SOA record for a domain is disabled, the entire domain is
considered to be disabled.
Effects: the record (or domain, respectively) will not be visible to DNS clients. The REST API will still see the record (or domain). Even if a domain is disabled, slaving still works. Slaving considers a disabled domain to have a serial of 0; this implies that a slaved domain will not stay disabled.
The autoserial functionality makes PowerDNS generate the SOA serial when
the SOA serial set to 0 in the database. The serial in SOA responses
is set to what’s provided by zone-lastchange-query. By default, this
is the highest value of the change_date field in the “records”
table).
To enable DNSSEC processing, the backend-dnssec option must be set
to ‘yes’.
Two additional fields in the ‘records’ table are important: ‘auth’ and
‘ordername’. These fields are set correctly on an incoming zone
transfer, and also by running pdnsutil rectify-zone.
The ‘auth’ field should be set to ‘1’ for data for which the zone itself is authoritative, which includes the SOA record and its own NS records.
The ‘auth’ field should be 0 however for NS records which are used for delegation, and also for any glue (A, AAAA) records present for this purpose. Do note that the DS record for a secure delegation should be authoritative!
The ‘ordername’ field needs to be filled out depending on the NSEC/NSEC3 mode. When running in NSEC3 ‘Narrow’ mode, the ordername field is ignored and best left empty. In NSEC/NSEC3 mode, the ordername field should be NULL for any glue but filled in for all delegation NS records and all authoritative records. In NSEC3 opt-out mode, ordername is NULL for any glue and insecure delegation NS records, but filled in for secure delegation NS records and all authoritative records.
In ‘NSEC’ mode, it should contain the relative part of a domain name, in reverse order, with dots replaced by spaces. So ‘www.uk.powerdnssec.org’ in the ‘powerdnssec.org’ zone should have ‘uk www’ as its ordername.
In ‘NSEC3’ non-narrow mode, the ordername should contain a lowercase
base32hex encoded representation of the salted & iterated hash of the
full record name. pdnsutil hash-zone-record zone record can be used
to calculate this hash.
In addition, PowerDNS fully supports empty non-terminals. If you have a zone example.com, and a host a.b.c.example.com in it, rectify-zone (and the AXFR client code) will insert b.c.example.com and c.example.com in the records table with type NULL (SQL NULL, not ‘NULL’). Having these entries provides several benefits. We no longer reply NXDOMAIN for these shorter names (this was an RFC violation but not one that caused trouble). But more importantly, to do NSEC3 correctly, we need to be able to prove existence of these shorter names. The type=NULL records entry gives us a place to store the NSEC3 hash of these names.
If your frontend does not add empty non-terminal names to records, you will get DNSSEC replies of 3.1-quality, which has served many people well, but might lead to issues in the future.
From version 4.0.0 onward, the generic SQL backends use prepared statements for their queries. Before 4.0.0, queries were expanded using the C function ‘snprintf’ which implies that substitutions are performed on the basis of %-placeholders.
To see the default queries for a backend, run
pdns_server --no-config --launch=BACKEND --config.
For regular operation, several queries are used for record-lookup. These queries must return the following fields in order:
Please note that the names of the fields are not relevant, but the order is!
basic-query: This is the most used query, needed for doing 1:1
lookups of qtype/name values.id-query: Used for doing lookups within a domain.any-query: For doing ANY queries. Also used internally.any-id-query: For doing ANY queries within a domain. Also used
internally.list-query: For doing AXFRs, lists all records in the zone. Also
used internally.list-subzone-query: For doing RFC 2136 DNS Updates, lists all
records below a zone.search-records-query: To search for records on name and content.These queries are used by e.g. pdnsutil rectify-zone. Make sure to
read Rules for filling out DNSSEC fields
if you wish to calculate ordername and auth without using pdns-rectify.
insert-empty-non-terminal-order--query: Insert empty non-terminal
in zone.delete-empty-non-terminal-query: Delete an empty non-terminal in
a zone.remove-empty-non-terminals-from-zone-query: remove all empty
non-terminals from zone.get-order-first-query: DNSSEC Ordering Query, first.get-order-before-query: DNSSEC Ordering Query, before.get-order-after-query: DNSSEC Ordering Query, after.get-order-last-query: DNSSEC Ordering Query, last.update-ordername-and-auth-query: DNSSEC update ordername and auth
for a qname query.update-ordername-and-auth-type-query: DNSSEC update ordername and
auth for a rrset query.nullify-ordername-and-update-auth-query: DNSSEC nullify ordername
and update auth for a qname query.nullify-ordername-and-update-auth-type-query: DNSSEC nullify
ordername and update auth for a rrset query.is-our-domain-query: Checks if the domain (either id or name) is
in the ‘domains’ table. This query is run before any other (possibly
heavy) query.insert-zone-query: Add a new domain. This query also requires the
type, masters and account fieldsupdate-kind-query: Called to update the type of domain.delete-zone-query Called to delete all records of a zone. Used
before an incoming AXFR.delete-domain-query: Called to delete a domain from the
domains-table.get-all-domains-query: Used to get information on all active
domains.info-zone-query: Called to retrieve (nearly) all information for
a domain.insert-record-query: Called during incoming AXFR.update-account-query: Set the account for a domain.delete-names-query: Called to delete all records of a certain
name.delete-rrset-query: Called to delete an RRset based on
domain_id, name and type.get-all-domain-metadata-query: Get all
domain metadata for a domain.get-domain-metadata-query: Get a single piece of
domain metadata.clear-domain-metadata-query: Delete a single entry of domain
metadata.clear-domain-all-metadata-query: Remove all domain metadata for a
domain.set-domain-metadata-query: Add domain metadata for a zone.add-domain-key-query: Called to a cryptokey to a domain.list-domain-keys-query: Called to get all cryptokeys for a
domain.activate-domain-key-query: Called to set a cryptokey to active.deactivate-domain-key-query: Called to set a cryptokey to
inactive.clear-domain-all-keys-query: Called to remove all DNSSEC keys for
a zone.remove-domain-key-query: Called to remove a crypto key.These queries are used to manipulate the master/slave information in the database. Most installations will have zero need to change the following queries.
info-all-master-query: Called to get data on all domains for
which the server is master.update-serial-query Called to update the last notified serial of
a master domain.zone-lastchange-query: Called to determine the last change to a
zone, used for autoserial.info-all-slaves-query: Called to retrieve all slave domains.master-zone-query: Called to determine the master of a zone.update-lastcheck-query: Called to update the last time a slave
domain was successfully checked for freshness.update-master-query: Called to update the master address of a
domain.supermaster-query: Called to determine if a certain host is a
supermaster for a certain domain name.supermaster-name-to-ips: Called to the IP and account for a
supermaster.get-tsig-key-query: Called to get the algorithm and secret from a
named TSIG key.get-tsig-keys-query: Called to get all TSIG keys.set-tsig-key-query: Called to set the algorithm and secret for a
named TSIG key.delete-tsig-key-query: Called to delete a named TSIG key.For listing/modifying comments.
list-comments-query: Called to get all comments in a zone.
Returns fields: domain_id, name, type, modified_at, account,
comment.insert-comment-query Called to create a single comment for a
specific RRSet. Given fields: domain_id, name, type, modified_at,
account, commentdelete-comment-rrset-query: Called to delete all comments for a
specific RRset. Given fields: domain_id, name, typedelete-comments-query: Called to delete all comments for a zone.
Usually called before deleting the entire zone. Given fields:
domain_idsearch-comments-query: Called to search for comment by name or
content.The queries above are specified in pdns.conf. For example, the basic-query for the Generic MySQL backend would appear as:
gmysql-basic-query=SELECT content,ttl,prio,type,domain_id,disabled,name,auth FROM records WHERE disabled=0 and type=? and name=?
Queries can span multiple lines, like this:
gmysql-basic-query=SELECT content,ttl,prio,type,domain_id,disabled,name,auth \
FROM records WHERE disabled=0 and type=? and name=?