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 an IPv4-capable network it:

• Listens on the local interface joined to that network -- you will want to start one ZeroNS per ZeroTier network.
• Provides general DNS by forwarding all queries to /etc/resolv.conf resolvers that do not match the TLD, similar to dnsmasq.
• Tells Central to point all clients that have the "Manage DNS" settings turned on to resolve to it.
• Finally, sets a provided TLD (.domain is the default), as well as configuring A (IPv4) records for:
  • Member IDs: zt-<memberid>.<tld> will resolve to the IPv4 addresses for them.
  • Names: if the names are compatible with DNS names, they will be converted as such: to <name>.<tld>.
    • Please note that collisions are possible and that it's up to the admin to prevent them.

Please note that zeronsd still does not properly utilize IPv6; we hope to have this resolved by 0.2.0.

Installation

Packages:

• Linux/Windows: releases contain packages for *.deb, *.rpm for Linux, and MSI format for Windows.
• Mac OS X: brew tap zerotier/homebrew-tap && brew install zerotier/homebrew-tap/zeronsd
• Docker: docker pull zerotier/zeronsd (see below for more on docker)

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:

• IS_LOCAL: if set, uses the local source tree and does not try to fetch.
• VERSION: this is the branch or tag to fetch.
• IS_TAG: if non-zero, tells cargo to fetch tags instead of branches.

Example:

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>

Running as a service

This behavior is currently only supported on Linux; we will accept patches for other platforms.

The zeronsd supervise and zeronsd unsupervise commands can be used to manipulate systemd unit files related to your network. For the supervise case, simply pass the arguments you would normally pass to start and it will generate a unit from it.

Example:

# to enable
zeronsd supervise -t ~/.token -f /etc/hosts -d mydomain 36579ad8f6a82ad3
# generates systemd unit file named /lib/systemd/system/zeronsd-36579ad8f6a82ad3.service
systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl enable zeronsd-36579ad8f6a82ad3.service && systemctl start zeronsd-36579ad8f6a82ad3.service

# to disable
systemctl disable zeronsd-36579ad8f6a82ad3.service && systemctl stop zeronsd-36579ad8f6a82ad3.service
zeronsd unsupervise 36579ad8f6a82ad3
systemctl daemon-reload

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

• -d <tld> will set a TLD for your records; the default is domain.
• -f <hosts file> will parse a file in /etc/hosts format and append it to your records.
• -s <secret file> path to authtoken.secret which is needed to talk to ZeroTier on localhost. You can provide this file with this argument, but it is auto-detected on multiple platforms including Linux, OS X and Windows.
• -t <central token file> path to file containing your ZeroTier Central token.

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 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