FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
    INDEX

           1. How to I try out MaraDNS?  2. What license is MaraDNS released
           under?

           3. How do I get MaraDNS to bind to multiple IP addresses?

           4. How come BIND 9 can not process MaraDNS queries when MaraDNS is
           bound to multiple IP addresses?

           5. How do I report bugs in MaraDNS?

           6. Some of the postings to the mailing list do not talk about
           MaraDNS!

           7. How to I get off the mailing list?

           8. How do I set up reverse DNS on MaraDNS?

           9. I am on a slow network, and MaraDNS can not process recursive
           queries

           10. When I try to run MaraDNS, I get a Fatal error: Error running
           populate_main program or a Fatal error: init_cache() failed error
           message.

           11. I am trying to register a domain under the .au or the .de name
           space,and my registrar is not taking my domain name

           12. After I start MaraDNS, I can not see the process when I run
           netstat -na

           13. What string library does MaraDNS use?

           14. Why is MaraDNS public domain instead of BSD or GPL licensed?

           15. Why does MaraDNS use a multi-threaded model?

           16. I feel that XXX feature should be added to MaraDNS

           17. I feel that MaraDNS should use another documentation format

           18. Is there any process I need to follow to add a patch to
           MaraDNS?

           19. Can MaraDNS act as a primary nameserver?

           20. Can MaraDNS act as a secondary nameserver?

           21. What is the difference between an authoritative and a recursive
           DNS server?

           22. The getzone client isnÂ't allowing me to add certain hostnames
           to my zone

           23. I have having problems transferring zones from MaraDNSÂ' zone
           server to a BIND zone transfer client

           24. Is MaraDNS portable?

           25. How do I compile MaraDNS on OpenBSD?

           26. Can I use MaraDNS in Windows?

           27. MaraDNS freezes up after being used for a while

           28. What kind of Python integration does MaraDNS have

           29. DoesnÂ't "kvar" mean "four" in Esperanto?

           30. How do I make MaraDNSÂ' time stamps human-readable?

           31. How scalable is MaraDNS?

           32. IÂ'm getting a warning about dangling CNAME entries
    ANSWERS

    1. How to I try out MaraDNS?

       Read the quick start guide, which is the file named 0QuickStart in the
       MaraDNS distribution.
    2. What license is MaraDNS released under?

       None, actually. MaraDNS is released to the public domain.

    3. How do I get MaraDNS to bind to multiple IP addresses?

       The current method is to run multiple copies of MaraDNS, each using its
       own mararc file.

       E.g:

           maradns -f /etc/mararc.1
           maradns -f /etc/mararc.2
           etc.

       If you just want to bind to all IP addresses your computer has, bind to
       the IP "0.0.0.0"; however this can cause problems. See the next
       question.

       I donÂ't think this will be too hard to correctly implement, since I
       already have code for specifying multiple IP addresses with the IP ACL
       code used by the zone server. Until then, I will add this workaround to
       the FAQ.

    4. How come BIND 9 can not process MaraDNS queries when MaraDNS is bound
    to multiple IP addresses?

       In certain cricumstances, when MaraDNS is bound to more than one IP
       address, the underlying OS will send the UDP reply with a different IP
       than the IP the UDP query was sent to. This will confuse BIND 9, since
       BIND 9Â's method for listening for requests that BIND has sent out
       expects the reply to come from the same IP that the request was sent
       to.
    5. How do I report bugs in MaraDNS?

       Before reporting a bug that MaraDNS has, please read the relevant man
       pages. The man pages should be installed when one installs MaraDNS,
       and, in addition, are available in the doc/man directory of the MaraDNS
       source tarball. (It is also possible that you are reading the man page
       right now)

       Some MaraDNS man pages (namely, the man pages for maradns, askmara,
       zoneserver, and mararc) have a section, titled "BUGS", which list
       already known bugs which I feel are not important enough to fix before
       the 1.0 release of MaraDNS. Bug reports which mention one of these bugs
       will be cheerfully ignored (or given a polite "thanks for the report,
       in this man page the bug is already mentioned" message if I am in a
       particularly good mood).

       Subscribe to the mailing list by sending mail to list-
       subscribe@maradns.org with "subscribe" as the subject line, and
       describe the bug by sending email to list@maradns.org.

    6. Some of the postings to the mailing list do not talk about MaraDNS!

       In cases where I post something to the mailing list which does not
       directly talk about MaraDNS, the subject line will not have [MARA] in
       it, but will have some form of the word CHATTER in it.  This way,
       people who do not like this can set up mail filters to filter out
       anything that comes from this list and doesnÂ't have [MARA] in the
       subject line, or simply unsubscribe from the list and read the list
       from the archives; if one needs to report a bug, they can subscribe to
       the list again, post their bug, then unsubscribe after a week.

       Another option is to set up oneÂ's Freshmeat preferences to be notified
       in email every time I update MaraDNS at Freshmeat. This will give one
       email notice of any critical bug fixes without needing to be subscribed
       to the mailing list.

       The web page http://www.maradns.org/ has a link to the mailing list
       archives.

    7. How to I get off the mailing list?

       Send an email to list-request@maradns.org with "unsubscribe" as the
       subject line.
    8. How do I set up reverse DNS on MaraDNS?

       By using PTR (pointer) records. For example, the PTR record which
       performs the reverse DNS lookup for the ip 1.2.3.4 looks like this in a
       CSV1 zone file:
           P4.3.2.1.in-addr.arpa.|86400|www.example.com.
       If you wish to have a PTR (reverse DNS lookup; getting a DNS name from
       a numeric IP) record work on the internet at large, it is not a simple
       matter of just adding a record like this to a MaraDNS zonefile. One
       also needs control of the appropriate in-addr.arpa. domain.  While it
       can make logical sense to contact the IP 10.11.12.13 when trying to get
       the reverse DNS lookup (fully qualified domain name) for a given IP,
       DNS servers donÂ't do this. DNS server, instead, contact the root DNS
       servers for a given in-addr.arpa name to get the reverse DNS lookup,
       just like they do with any other record type.

       When an internet service provider is given a block of IPs, they are
       also given control of the DNS zones which allow them to control reverse
       DNS lookups for those IPs. While it is possible to obtain a domain and
       run a DNS server without the knowledge or intervention of an ISP, being
       able to control reverse DNS loookups for those IPs requires ISP
       intervention.

    9. I am on a slow network, and MaraDNS can not process recursive queries

       MaraDNS, by default, only waits two seconds for a reply from a remote
       DNS server. This default can be increased by adding a line like this in
       the mararc file:

           timeout_seconds = 5

       Note that making this too high will slow MaraDNS down when DNS servers
       are down, which is, alas, all too common on todayÂ's internet.

    10. When I try to run MaraDNS, I get a Fatal error: Error running
    populate_main program or a Fatal error: init_cache() failed error message.

       If a line in a mararc file is too long, you will see, before the "Fatal
       error: Error running populate_main program" message, a message showing
       you the line number which is too long and the filename with the
       offending line. While it is possible to increase this limit by changing
       the appropriate variable in the MaraDns.h file, the current limit is in
       line with the 512-byte limit that UDP DNS packets have; MaraDNS does
       not currently support DNS over TCP.  Otherwise, this error message
       should not be visible. If it appears, subscribe to the mailing list
       (see above), and describe your problem by sending email to
       list@maradns.org. Be sure to include the following information:

       * The contents of your /etc/mararc file

       * The contents of any files in /etc/maradns

       * The full output MaraDNS generates

    11. I am trying to register a domain under the .au or the .de name space,
    and my registrar is not taking my domain name

       Both the German registrar and the Australian registrars require a
       RR_ANY request to return NS and SOA records. MaraDNS can do this if you
       add the following line to your mararc file:

       default_rrany_set = 15

    12. After I start MaraDNS, I can not see the process when I run netstat
    -na

       Udp services do not have a prominent "LISTEN" when netstat is run.
       When MaraDNS is up, the relevant line in the netstat output looks like
       this: udp 0 0 127.0.0.4:53 0.0.0.0:*

       While on the topic of netstat, if you run netstat -nap as root, you can
       see the names of the processes which are providing internet services.

    13. What string library does MaraDNS use?

       MaraDNS uses her own string library, which is called the "js_string"
       library. Man pages for most of the functions in the js_string library
       are in the folder doc/man of the MaraDNS distribution

    14. Why is MaraDNS public domain instead of BSD or GPL licensed?

       The post-1.0.xx releases of MaraDNS are, in fact, under a simple BSD
       license (without any "obnoxious" advertising clause).

       I used a public domain (non-)license so that MaraDNS could be
       integrated with Python without trouble. While Python is, I believe,
       currently GPL compatible, Python was not GPL-compatible at the time I
       decided on a license for MaraDNS.

    15. Why does MaraDNS use a multi-threaded model?

       The multi-threaded model is, plain and simple, the simplest way to
       write a functioning recursive DNS server. There is a reason why
       MaraDNS, pdnsd, and BIND 9 all use the multi-threaded model.

    16. I feel that XXX feature should be added to MaraDNS

       Before sending mail to the list with a feature request, please read the
       UNIMPLEMENTED FEATURES section of the MaraDNS man page, which has a
       list of feature requests other people have already sent me. If you do
       not see your requested feature in this section of the man page, send an
       email to the mailing list so that I can add your feature request to the
       UNIMPLEMENTED FEATURES section of the MaraDNS man page.

       Feature requests which include a patch which implements the feature in
       question are may even be implemented by MaraDNS, as long as the patch
       comes with a declaration that the patch is public domain.

       Note that MaraDNS is currently "frozen". In other words, new features
       will not be added until after the 1.0 release.

    17. I feel that MaraDNS should use another documentation format

       The reason that MaraDNS uses its own documentation format is to satisfy
       both the needs of translators to have a unified document format and my
       own need to use a documentation format that is simple enough to be
       readily understood and which I can add features on an as needed basis.

       The documentation format is essentially simplified HTML with some
       special tags added to meet MaraDNSÂ' special needs.

       For people who prefer other formats of documentation, I am open to
       making filters which convert from MaraDNSÂ' own "EJ" documentation
       format to the format in question after MaraDNS 1.0 is released.

       Having a given program have its own documentation format is not without
       precedent; Perl uses its own "pod" documentation format.

    18. Is there any process I need to follow to add a patch to MaraDNS?

       Yes.

       Here is the procedure for making a proper patch:

       * Enter the directory that the file is in, for example
         maradns-0.9.20/server

       * Copy over the file that you wish to modify to another file name. For
         example: cp MaraDNS.c MaraDNS.c.orig

       * Edit the file in question, e.g: vi MaraDNS.c

       * After editing, do something like this:
         diff -u MaraDNS.c.orig MaraDNS.c > maradns.patch

       * Make sure the modified version compiles cleanly

       Send a patch to me in email, along with a statement that you place the
       contents of the patch in to the public domain. If I find that the patch
       works well, I will integrate it in to MaraDNS.

    19. Can MaraDNS act as a primary nameserver?

       Yes.

       The zoneserver program serves zones so that other DNS servers can be
       secondaries for zones which MaraDNS serves. This is a separate program
       from the maradns server, which processes both authoritative and
       recursive UDP DNS queries.

    20. Can MaraDNS act as a secondary nameserver?

       Yes.

       The Â'getzoneÂ' program obtains zone files from remote DNS servers,
       outputting the contents of the zone file in MaraDNSÂ' "csv1" zone file
       format. This program can be run from cron. If one desires more BIND-
       like functionality, getzone can be wrapped in a shell script that uses
       askmara to look at the SOA record to see if the serial number of the
       zone has changed.

       I feel that the traditional DNS design of having a single application
       both serve DNS records and handle the maintenance of zone files is not
       ideal; the best design is to have a number of simple applications
       working together.

    21. What is the difference between an authoritative and a recursive DNS
    server?

       A recursive DNS server is a DNS server that is able to contact other
       DNS servers in order to resolve a given domain name label. This is the
       kind of DNS server one points to in /etc/resolve.conf An authoritative
       DNS server is a DNS server that a recursive server contacts in order to
       find out the answer to a given DNS query.

    22. The getzone client isnÂÂ't allowing me to add certain hostnames to my
    zone

       For security reasons, MaraDNSÂ' getzone client does not add records
       which are not part of the zone in question. For example, if someone has
       a zone for example.com, and this record in the zone: P1.1.1.10.in-
       addr.arpa.|86400|dns.example.com.

       MaraDNS will not add the record, since the record is out-of-bailiwick.
       In other words, it is a host name that does not end in .example.com.

       There are two workarounds for this issue:

       * Create a zone file for 1.1.10.in-addr.arpa., and put the PTR records
         there.

       * Use rcp, rsync, or another method to copy over the zone files in
         question.

    23. I have having problems transferring zones from MaraDNSÂÂ' zone server to
    a BIND zone transfer client

       BIND is rather picky about what kind of data it will accept from a zone
       server. Make sure the following is true with your domain:

       * Make sure that the authoritative NS records are at the top of your
         zone, immediately after the SOA record

       * Make sure that your authoritative NS records are NS records for your
         zone

       * To work around a known bug in MaraDNS, make sure you have at least
         one non-NS record between the authoritative NS records for your zone
         and any delegation NS records that exist in the zone.

       Here is an example bad zone file:

       Sexample.com.|86400|example.com.|hostmaster@example.com.|1|86400|3600|6048000|86400
       Nbad.example.com.|86400|ns1.example.com.
       Nbad.example.com.|86400|ns2.example.com.
       Nsubdomain.example.com.|86400|ns.subdomain.example.com.
       Aexample.com.|12345|10.2.3.4
       Here is the same zone file, with corrections:

       Sexample.com.|86400|example.com.|hostmaster@example.com.|1|86400|3600|6048000|86400
       Nexample.com.|86400|ns1.example.com.
       Nexample.com.|86400|ns2.example.com.
       Aexample.com.|12345|10.2.3.4
       Nsubdomain.example.com.|86400|ns.subdomain.example.com.
    24. Is MaraDNS portable?

       While I intend to have MaraDNS be a portable DNS server which will
       compile on a variety of unices, right now all of MaraDNSÂ's work
       development is being done on Linux.  In terms of proprietary OSes, I
       know that SCO Open Server, SCO UNIXware and Solaris have issues running
       a UDP or TCP server in a chroot() environment. Word is that, with
       Solaris and UNIXware, placing /dev/tcp and /dev/udp in the chroot()
       jail will allow a server like MaraDNS to function.

    25. How do I compile MaraDNS on OpenBSD?

       There are two ways to do this:

       To use the native thread support add -pthread to the CFLAGS variable.

       To use the GNU pthread library, install the pth package and add
       -L/usr/local/lib/pth to the linker.

       (Florin Iucha provided this tip)

    26. Can I use MaraDNS in Windows?

       Yes.

       Provided, of course, that one has the Cygwin environment which emulates
       a UNIX environment in Windows.

       MaraDNS should now compile fine on Cygwin systems. If not, join the
       mailing list and let me know; I will correct this FAQ entry.

    27. MaraDNS freezes up after being used for a while

       If using your ISPÂ's name servers or some other name servers which are
       not, in fact, root name servers, please make sure that you are using
       the upstream_servers dictionary variable instead of the root_servers
       dictionary variable.  If you still see MaraDNS freeze up after making
       this correction, please send a bug report to the mailing list.

    28. What kind of Python integration does MaraDNS have

       The mararc file uses the same syntax that Python uses; in fact, Python
       can parse a properly formatted mararc file.  There is currently no
       other integration with Python.

    29. DoesnÂÂ't "kvar" mean "four" in Esperanto?

       Indeed, it does. However the use of "kvar" in the MaraDNS source code
       only coincidentally is an Esperanto word. "kvar" is short for "Kiwi
       variable"; a lot of the parsing code comes from the code used in the
       Kiwi spam filter project.
    30. How do I make MaraDNSÂÂ' time stamps human-readable?

       MaraDNS uses standard UNIX timestamps; which is the number of seconds
       since Midnight, January 1, 1970.  To make MaraDNSÂ' time stamps human
       readable, use this awk script:

       maradns -f /etc/maradns | awk â
                 /Timestamp/{
                  gsub(/Timestamp: ([0-9]+)/,
                       strftime("%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S",$2),$0)}
                 {print}â >> logfile

       The MaraDNS startup script has the option to use this Awk script to
       convert the time stamp; read the script for details.

    31. How scalable is MaraDNS?

       MaraDNS is optimized for serving a small number of domains as quickly
       as possible. That said, MaraDNS is remarkably efficnent for serving a
       large number of domains, as long as the server MaraDNS is on has the
       memory to fit all of the domains, and as long as the startup time for
       loading a large number of domains can be worked around.  The "big-O" or
       "theta" growth rates for various MaraDNS functions are as follows,
       where N is the number of authoritative host names being served:
       Startup time                  N
       Memory usage                  N
       Processing incoming DNS requests   1
       As can be seen, MaraDNS will process 1 or 100000 domains in the same
       amount of time, once the domain names are loaded in to memory.

    IÂÂ'm getting a warning about dangling CNAME entries

       Let us suppose we have a CNAME record without an A record in the local
       DNS serverÂ's database, such as:

            Cgoogle.example.com.|86400|www.google.com.
       This record, which is a CNAME record for "google.example.com", points
       to "www.google.com". Some DNS servers will recursively look up
       www.google.com, and render the above record like this:

            Cgoogle.example.com.|86400|www.google.com.
            Awww.google.com.|900|66.102.7.104
       For security reasons, MaraDNS doesnÂ't do this. Instead, MaraDNS will
       simply output:

            Cgoogle.example.com.|86400|www.google.com.

       Some stub resolvers will be unable to resolve google.example.com as a
       consequence.

       If you want to remove these warnings, add the following to your mararc
       file:

            no_cname_warnings = 1
       Information about how to get MaraDNS to resolve dangling CNAME records
       is in the tutorial file dangling.html <!--

    32. How much memory does MaraDNS use?

       -->
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