ZeroNS: a name service centered around the ZeroTier Central API

ZeroNS provides names that are a part of ZeroTier Central's configured networks; once provided a network it:

Installation

Packages:

Other methods:

Get a release from Cargo

Please obtain a working rust environment first.

cargo install zeronsd

From Git

cargo install --git https://github.com/zerotier/zeronsd --branch main

Docker

There is a Dockerfile present in the repository you can use to build images in lieu of one of our official images.

There are build arguments which control behavior:

Example:

bash docker build . # builds latest master docker build --build-arg VERSION=somebranch # builds branch `somebranch` docker build --build-arg IS_TAG=1 --build-arg VERSION=v0.1.0 # builds version 0.1.0 from tag v0.1.0

Once built, the image automatically runs zeronsd for you. The default subcommand is help.

Usage

Setting ZEROTIER_CENTRAL_TOKEN in the environment is required. You must be able to administer the network to use zeronsd with it. Also, running as root is required as many client resolvers do not work over anything but port 53. Your zeronsd instance will listen on both udp and tcp, port 53.

Bare commandline

Tip: running sudo? Pass the -E flag to import your current shell's environment, making it easier to add the ZEROTIER_CENTRAL_TOKEN.

zeronsd start <network id>

Docker

Running in docker is a little more complicated. You must be able to have a network interface you can import (joined a network) and must be able to reach localhost:9999 on the host. At this time, for brevity's sake we are recommending running with --net=host until we have more time to investigate a potentially more secure solution.

You also need to mount your authtoken.secret, which we use to talk to zerotier-one

docker run -v /var/lib/zerotier-one:/var/lib/zerotier-one:ro --net host zerotier/zeronsd start <network id>

Other notes

You must have already joined a network and obviously, zerotier-one should be running!

It should print some diagnostics after it has talked to your zerotier-one instance to figure out what IP to listen on. After that it should communicate with the central API and set everything else up automatically.

Flags

TTLs

Records currently have a TTL of 60s, and Central's records are refreshed every 30s through the API. I felt this was a safer bet than letting timeouts happen.

Per-Interface DNS resolution

OS X and Windows users get this functionality by default, so there is no need for it.

Linux users are strongly encouraged to use systemd-networkd along with systemd-resolved to get per-interface resolvers that you can isolate to the domain you want to use. If you'd like to try something that can assist with getting you going quickly, check out the erikh/zerotier-systemd-manager repository.

BSD systems still need a bit of work; work that we could really use your help with if you know the lay of the land on your BSD of choice. Set up an issue if this interests you.

Acknowledgements

ZeroNS demands a lot out of the trust-dns toolkit and I personally am grateful such a library suite exists. It made my job very easy.

Author

Erik Hollensbe github@hollensbe.org