dns

DNS zones for the Open Computing Facility

DNS source of truth

While this repo holds the live DNS config which is served by our DNS server, the authoritative source for DNS is LDAP. Hosts can have the following LDAP attributes:

• dnsA for A and AAAA records.

  Whether the host will automatically get IPv6 records depends on the type of host. For an up-to-date listing, run:

  $ python3 -c 'import ocflib.infra.hosts; print(ocflib.infra.hosts.HOST_TYPES_WITH_IPV6)'

• dnsCname for CNAME records.

In most cases, you should not use dnsA. For example, the mail server has:

$ ldapsearch -x cn=anthrax dnsCname
# anthrax, Hosts, OCF.Berkeley.EDU
dn: cn=anthrax,ou=Hosts,dc=OCF,dc=Berkeley,dc=EDU
dnsCname: mail
dnsCname: smtp

There are some rare cases where it's necessary to use A records instead, usually mandated by some RFC. For example, the "apex" (root) of a domain cannot be a CNAME (because of the SOA record), so you must use dnsA. Another example is when one hostname needs multiple IPs (e.g. mesos.ocf.berkeley.edu).

Making changes

When updating DNS, apply your changes to LDAP, and then run make. It will rebuild the primary DNS (db.ocf) and reverse DNS, including pulling host data from LDAP and bumping the serial number.

Sanity-check the diff before commiting to make sure the changes in LDAP make sense. If not, don't push!

Some zones under etc/zones are not automatically generated (e.g. asuc.org). These have to be manually edited. Be sure to bump the serial.

The Makefile targets you're intended to run are:

• make: update the DNS
• make test: run pre-commit hooks
• make install-hooks: install pre-commit hooks so that they run automatically

Hostname suggestions

A list of proposed hostnames, if you can't think of one, is located at ~staff/server_name_ideas.