Simon Kelley ([email protected]) wrote on 23 November 2010 16:02: >Loune Lam wrote: >> I've been using dnsmasq for a long time and it has been working >> brilliantly. One feature I find that it's missing though, is a DNS >> recursor. Having the ability to recurse would make it the most >> lightweight self-containing DNS server/Cache. I've done some preliminary >> investigations on how this could be done, which I've outlined below. If >> Simon and others here are interested I'd be happy to create a patch for >> inclusion in the mainline. > >I'd certainly consider this, but I'm not sure it's a good idea. > >It's a lot of extra code, when dnsmasq tries to be small. > >Most dnsmasq installations don't need it, indeed dnsmasq allows people >to have their own nameserver without having their own _recursive_ >nameserver. I'm not sure it's a good idea to encourage every leaf node >on the net to run a recursive server. When your ISP's nameserver looks >up www.google.com at Google's authoritative server, it shares that >information with thousands of customers. If all those customers run >recursive servers, they all have to talk to Google's servers. > >Doing recursive DNS without generating security holes seems to be hard. >I certainly don't know enough to be sure of doing it safely without a >lot of research. Solutions are already available which have tackled the >problems. (see below) > >Those people who have needed this, have generally done it by using >dnsmasq as a front end and pointing it at dnscache
That's what I do here, and it works very well. >If you want to patch dnsmasq for your own use, and make the changes >available, that's great. Use the power of Free Software. If the patch >allows conditional compilation of the recursor, and looks like it won't >be a big ongoing maintenance headache, I _might_ take it into the >mainline, but no promises. Lots of if's in the paragraph above... And it'd have to be a high quality work, because if it's inferior to the other solutions it's not worth it. >A chorus of "but we'd love that feature" on here would help sway me. I would, but only under the above conditions. The cost/benefit seems hard to justify...
