On Thu, 24 Oct 2024 20:16:30 +0100 Chris Green <c...@isbd.net> wrote:
> I have just installed Debian Bookworm on my backup server which is a > Fujitsu Esprimo Q556 with an 8TB external USB drive for backup. I was > previously running xubuntu there. > > It has all gone very straightforwrdly, the actual installation only > took half an hour or so and configuring things not much more. I've > already run a backup from one of my smaller systems and it ran fine. > > On xubuntu I have made a habit of removing systemd-resolved.service > and installing dnsmasq. (I know they're not quite the same thing, but > the result works OK) > > Thus dnsmasq provides a local caching DNS service and it passes DNS > queries that it can't answer on to my main LAN DNS server. It uses > the file /run/NetworkManager/no-stub-resolv.conf to tell it where > the upstream DNS server is. > > However my backup system is headless so doesn't have Network Manager > installed. (No desktop installed, just basic utilities and ssh) > It doesn't appear to have systemd-resolved.service installed either. > > It works fine though. The /etc/resolv.conf is:- > > domain zbmc.eu > search zbmc.eu > nameserver 192.168.1.1 > > which simply means all DNS gets passed to my LAN's DNS server. Is that > what one gets on a minimal installation, no explicit DNS server or > resolv management? I'm very happy with this, it's very simple and the > backup system isn't going to make a lot of DNS queries such that it > needs a DNS cache. Have I understood this OK? > I would not expect a DNS server as part of a minimal installation, the default assumption will be to pick up the network DNS server and gateway from DHCP, and in many networks they will be the same device anyway. In an installation not using a DHCP client, you would be expected to make your own DNS and gateway arrangements along with the IP address. If you're not running Network Manager nor a resolver application, nothing will touch /etc/resolv.conf, so the nameserver would normally go there, as you have done. I'm just setting up a Raspberry Pi headless server, and it does run bind9, but before I had installed that I had set things up in the way described. Does dnsmasq not have a forwarders configuration? I've never used it, but I would have thought it did, as it doesn't use root hints. If so, that's the right place to put the nameserver(s) it will relay queries to. -- Joe
