https://hub.docker.com/u/powerdns offers automatic builds of dnsdist, Auth and Recursor, from the pdns.git master branch.
The images are based on Debian Buster (slim).
The Dockerfiles:
- https://github.com/PowerDNS/pdns/blob/master/Dockerfile-auth
- https://github.com/PowerDNS/pdns/blob/master/Dockerfile-dnsdist
- https://github.com/PowerDNS/pdns/blob/master/Dockerfile-recursor
Other data involved in the Docker build process can be found at https://github.com/PowerDNS/pdns/tree/master/dockerdata
The images are ready to run with limited functionality.
At container startup, the startup.py wrapper (from the dockerdata directory linked above) checks for PDNS_RECURSOR_API_KEY
/ PDNS_AUTH_API_KEY
/ DNSDIST_API_KEY
environment variables for the product you are running.
If such a variable is found, /etc/powerdns-api.conf
or /etc/dnsdist-api.conf
is written, enabling the webserver in all products, and the dnsdist console.
For the dnsdist console, make sure that your API key is in a format suitable for the console (use makeKey()
).
The default configs shipped in the image (see dockerdata above) parse all files in /etc/powerdns/pdns.d
/ /etc/powerdns/recursor.d
/ /etc/dnsdist/conf.d
.
The image also ships a symlink to the API config file inside those .d
dirs.
For Auth and Recursor, extra configuration can be passed on the command line, or via a volume mount into /etc/powerdns
or the .d
dir.
For dnsdist, only the volume mount is applicable.
If you want to volume mount a config, but also take the keys from the environment, please take care to include the same X-api.conf
symlink in your .d
directory.
The default auth config uses SQLite3 in /var/lib/powerdns/pdns.sqlite3
.
We suggest providing that file via a volume.
For other databases, either pass config overrides on the command line, or mount a config file.
When using the LMDB backend with the auth image, please make sure that any containers that might access the database volume do not have overlapping PIDs - otherwise you will get locking problems and possibly resulting corruption. In a plain Docker or Compose setup, this can be done by using the host PID namespace.
We have a Docker Compose example at https://github.com/PowerDNS/pdns/blob/master/docker-compose.yml . It brings up all three services, and exposes them to eachother by name (using Docker's internal DNS). In the dockerdata dir, you can find an example dnsdist Lua config (with Python helper to make DNS lookups non-blocking for dnsdist) for managing your auth/rec backends by name.
The default configurations included for dnsdist, Auth and Recursor attempt to bind to port 53, which may not be permitted by the platform on which you intend to use these images. Kubernetes clusters, for example, might have a restriction on binding to privileged ports unless the NET_BIND_SERVICE
capability is explicitly added to the container's security context.
There are multiple ways of dealing with these restrictions if you encounter them:
- Grant the
NET_BIND_SERVICE
capability to the containers which utilize these images - Use custom configuration files to bind to alternate ports outside of the privileged range. This can be done via the following configuration settings:
- dnsdist:
setLocal()
- Auth & Recursor:
local-address
and/orlocal-port
- dnsdist:
Note: Docker Engine 20.10.0 (released december 2020) removed the need to set the NET_BIND_SERVICE
capability when attempting to bind to a privileged port.