DNSMASQ(8) System Manager's Manual DNSMASQ(8)
NAME
dnsmasq - A lightweight DHCP and caching DNS server.
SYNOPSIS
dnsmasq [OPTION]...
DESCRIPTION
dnsmasq is a lightweight DNS, TFTP, PXE, router advertisement and DHCP
server. It is intended to provide coupled DNS and DHCP service to a LAN.
Dnsmasq accepts DNS queries and either answers them from a small, local,
cache or forwards them to a real, recursive, DNS server. It loads the
contents of /etc/hosts so that local hostnames which do not appear in
the global DNS can be resolved and also answers DNS queries for DHCP
configured hosts. It can also act as the authoritative DNS server for
one or more domains, allowing local names to appear in the global DNS.
It can be configured to do DNSSEC validation.
The dnsmasq DHCP server supports static address assignments and multiple
networks. It automatically sends a sensible default set of DHCP options,
and can be configured to send any desired set of DHCP options, including
vendor-encapsulated options. It includes a secure, read-only, TFTP
server to allow net/PXE boot of DHCP hosts and also supports BOOTP. The
PXE support is full featured, and includes a proxy mode which supplies
PXE information to clients whilst DHCP address allocation is done by an-
other server.
The dnsmasq DHCPv6 server provides the same set of features as the
DHCPv4 server, and in addition, it includes router advertisements and a
neat feature which allows naming for clients which use DHCPv4 and state-
less autoconfiguration only for IPv6 configuration. There is support for
doing address allocation (both DHCPv6 and RA) from subnets which are dy-
namically delegated via DHCPv6 prefix delegation.
Dnsmasq is coded with small embedded systems in mind. It aims for the
smallest possible memory footprint compatible with the supported func-
tions, and allows unneeded functions to be omitted from the compiled
binary.
OPTIONS
Note that in general missing parameters are allowed and switch off func-
tions, for instance "--pid-file" disables writing a PID file. On BSD,
unless the GNU getopt library is linked, the long form of the options
does not work on the command line; it is still recognised in the config-
uration file.
--test Read and syntax check configuration file(s). Exit with code 0 if
all is OK, or a non-zero code otherwise. Do not start up dnsmasq.
-w, --help
Display all command-line options. --help dhcp will display known
DHCPv4 configuration options, and --help dhcp6 will display
DHCPv6 options.
-h, --no-hosts
Don't read the hostnames in /etc/hosts.
-H, --addn-hosts=<file>
Additional hosts file. Read the specified file as well as
/etc/hosts. If --no-hosts is given, read only the specified file.
This option may be repeated for more than one additional hosts
file. If a directory is given, then read all the files contained
in that directory in alphabetical order.
--hostsdir=<path>
Read all the hosts files contained in the directory. New or
changed files are read automatically and modified and deleted
files have removed records automatically deleted.
-E, --expand-hosts
Add the domain to simple names (without a period) in /etc/hosts
in the same way as for DHCP-derived names. Note that this does
not apply to domain names in cnames, PTR records, TXT records
etc.
-T, --local-ttl=<time>
When replying with information from /etc/hosts or configuration
or the DHCP leases file dnsmasq by default sets the time-to-live
field to zero, meaning that the requester should not itself cache
the information. This is the correct thing to do in almost all
situations. This option allows a time-to-live (in seconds) to be
given for these replies. This will reduce the load on the server
at the expense of clients using stale data under some circum-
stances.
--dhcp-ttl=<time>
As for --local-ttl, but affects only replies with information
from DHCP leases. If both are given, --dhcp-ttl applies for DHCP
information, and --local-ttl for others. Setting this to zero
eliminates the effect of --local-ttl for DHCP.
--neg-ttl=<time>
Negative replies from upstream servers normally contain time-to-
live information in SOA records which dnsmasq uses for caching.
If the replies from upstream servers omit this information, dns-
masq does not cache the reply. This option gives a default value
for time-to-live (in seconds) which dnsmasq uses to cache nega-
tive replies even in the absence of an SOA record.
--max-ttl=<time>
Set a maximum TTL value that will be handed out to clients. The
specified maximum TTL will be given to clients instead of the
true TTL value if it is lower. The true TTL value is however kept
in the cache to avoid flooding the upstream DNS servers.
--max-cache-ttl=<time>
Set a maximum TTL value for entries in the cache.
--min-cache-ttl=<time>
Extend short TTL values to the time given when caching them. Note
that artificially extending TTL values is in general a bad idea,
do not do it unless you have a good reason, and understand what
you are doing. Dnsmasq limits the value of this option to one
hour, unless recompiled.
--auth-ttl=<time>
Set the TTL value returned in answers from the authoritative
server.
--fast-dns-retry=[<initial retry delay in ms>[,<time to continue retries
in ms>]]
Under normal circumstances, dnsmasq relies on DNS clients to do
retries; it does not generate timeouts itself. Setting this op-
tion instructs dnsmasq to generate its own retries starting after
a delay which defaults to 1000ms. If the second parameter is
given this controls how long the retries will continue for other-
wise this defaults to 10000ms. Retries are repeated with exponen-
tial backoff. Using this option increases memory usage and net-
work bandwidth. If not otherwise configured, this option is acti-
vated with the default parameters when --dnssec is set.
-k, --keep-in-foreground
Do not go into the background at startup but otherwise run as
normal. This is intended for use when dnsmasq is run under dae-
montools or launchd.
-d, --no-daemon
Debug mode: don't fork to the background, don't write a pid file,
don't change user id, generate a complete cache dump on receipt
on SIGUSR1, log to stderr as well as syslog, don't fork new
processes to handle TCP queries. Note that this option is for use
in debugging only, to stop dnsmasq daemonising in production, use
--keep-in-foreground.
-q, --log-queries
Log the results of DNS queries handled by dnsmasq. Enable a full
cache dump on receipt of SIGUSR1. If the argument "extra" is sup-
plied, ie --log-queries=extra then the log has extra information
at the start of each line. This consists of a serial number
which ties together the log lines associated with an individual
query, and the IP address of the requestor. If the argument
"proto" is supplied, this shows everything that "extra" does and
also the network protocol used to communicate the queries.
-8, --log-facility=<facility>
Set the facility to which dnsmasq will send syslog entries, this
defaults to DAEMON, and to LOCAL0 when debug mode is in opera-
tion. If the facility given contains at least one '/' character,
it is taken to be a filename, and dnsmasq logs to the given file,
instead of syslog. If the facility is '-' then dnsmasq logs to
stderr. (Errors whilst reading configuration will still go to
syslog, but all output from a successful startup, and all output
whilst running, will go exclusively to the file.) When logging to
a file, dnsmasq will close and reopen the file when it receives
SIGUSR2. This allows the log file to be rotated without stopping
dnsmasq.
--log-debug
Enable extra logging intended for debugging rather than informa-
tion.
--log-async[=<lines>]
Enable asynchronous logging and optionally set the limit on the
number of lines which will be queued by dnsmasq when writing to
the syslog is slow. Dnsmasq can log asynchronously: this allows
it to continue functioning without being blocked by syslog, and
allows syslog to use dnsmasq for DNS queries without risking
deadlock. If the queue of log-lines becomes full, dnsmasq will
log the overflow, and the number of messages lost. The default
queue length is 5, a sane value would be 5-25, and a maximum
limit of 100 is imposed.
-x, --pid-file=<path>
Specify an alternate path for dnsmasq to record its process-id
in. Normally /var/run/dnsmasq.pid.
-u, --user=<username>
Specify the userid to which dnsmasq will change after startup.
Dnsmasq must normally be started as root, but it will drop root
privileges after startup by changing id to another user. Normally
this user is "nobody" but that can be over-ridden with this
switch.
-g, --group=<groupname>
Specify the group which dnsmasq will run as. The default is
"dip", if available, to facilitate access to /etc/ppp/resolv.conf
which is not normally world readable.
-v, --version
Print the version number.
-p, --port=<port>
Listen on <port> instead of the standard DNS port (53). Setting
this to zero completely disables DNS function, leaving only DHCP
and/or TFTP.
-P, --edns-packet-max=<size>
Specify the largest EDNS.0 UDP packet which is supported by the
DNS forwarder. Defaults to 1232, which is the recommended size
following the DNS flag day in 2020. Only increase if you know
what you are doing.
-Q, --query-port=<query_port>
Send outbound DNS queries from, and listen for their replies on,
the specific UDP port <query_port> instead of using random ports.
NOTE that using this option will make dnsmasq less secure against
DNS spoofing attacks but it may be faster and use less resources.
Setting this option to zero makes dnsmasq use a single port allo-
cated to it by the OS: this was the default behaviour in versions
prior to 2.43.
--port-limit=<#ports>
By default, when sending a query via random ports to multiple up-
stream servers or retrying a query dnsmasq will use a single ran-
dom port for all the tries/retries. This option allows a larger
number of ports to be used, which can increase robustness in cer-
tain network configurations. Note that increasing this to more
than two or three can have security and resource implications and
should only be done with understanding of those.
--min-port=<port>
Do not use ports less than that given as source for outbound DNS
queries. Dnsmasq picks random ports as source for outbound
queries: when this option is given, the ports used will always be
larger than that specified. Useful for systems behind firewalls.
If not specified, defaults to 1024.
--max-port=<port>
Use ports lower than that given as source for outbound DNS
queries. Dnsmasq picks random ports as source for outbound
queries: when this option is given, the ports used will always be
lower than that specified. Useful for systems behind firewalls.
-i, --interface=<interface name>
Listen only on the specified interface(s). Dnsmasq automatically
adds the loopback (local) interface to the list of interfaces to
use when the --interface option is used. If no --interface or
--listen-address options are given dnsmasq listens on all avail-
able interfaces except any given in --except-interface options.
On Linux, when --bind-interfaces or --bind-dynamic are in effect,
IP alias interface labels (eg "eth1:0") are checked, rather than
interface names. In the degenerate case when an interface has one
address, this amounts to the same thing but when an interface has
multiple addresses it allows control over which of those ad-
dresses are accepted. The same effect is achievable in default
mode by using --listen-address. A simple wildcard, consisting of
a trailing '*', can be used in --interface and --except-interface
options.
-I, --except-interface=<interface name>
Do not listen on the specified interface. Note that the order of
--listen-address --interface and --except-interface options does
not matter and that --except-interface options always override
the others. The comments about interface labels for --listen-ad-
dress apply here.
--auth-server=<domain>,[<interface>|<ip-address>...]
Enable DNS authoritative mode for queries arriving at an inter-
face or address. Note that the interface or address need not be
mentioned in --interface or --listen-address configuration, in-
deed --auth-server will override these and provide a different
DNS service on the specified interface. The <domain> is the "glue
record". It should resolve in the global DNS to an A and/or AAAA
record which points to the address dnsmasq is listening on. When
an interface is specified, it may be qualified with "/4" or "/6"
to specify only the IPv4 or IPv6 addresses associated with the
interface. Since any defined authoritative zones are also avail-
able as part of the normal recusive DNS service supplied by dns-
masq, it can make sense to have an --auth-server declaration with
no interfaces or address, but simply specifying the primary ex-
ternal nameserver.
--local-service[=net|host]
Without parameter or with net parameter, restricts service to
connected network. Accept DNS queries only from hosts whose ad-
dress is on a local subnet, ie a subnet for which an interface
exists on the server. With host parameter, listens only on lo in-
terface and accepts queries from localhost only. This option only
has effect if there are no --interface, --except-interface,
--listen-address or --auth-server options. It is intended to be
set as a default on installation, to allow unconfigured installa-
tions to be useful but also safe from being used for DNS amplifi-
cation attacks.
-2, --no-dhcp-interface=<interface name>
Do not provide DHCP, TFTP or router advertisement on the speci-
fied interface, but do provide DNS service.
--no-dhcpv4-interface=<interface name>
Disable only IPv4 DHCP on the specified interface.
--no-dhcpv6-interface=<interface name>
Disable IPv6 DHCP and router advertisement on the specified in-
terface.
-a, --listen-address=<ipaddr>
Listen on the given IP address(es). Both --interface and --lis-
ten-address options may be given, in which case the set of both
interfaces and addresses is used. Note that if no --interface op-
tion is given, but --listen-address is, dnsmasq will not automat-
ically listen on the loopback interface. To achieve this, its IP
address, 127.0.0.1, must be explicitly given as a --listen-ad-
dress option.
-z, --bind-interfaces
On systems which support it, dnsmasq binds the wildcard address,
even when it is listening on only some interfaces. It then dis-
cards requests that it shouldn't reply to. This has the advantage
of working even when interfaces come and go and change address.
This option forces dnsmasq to really bind only the interfaces it
is listening on. About the only time when this is useful is when
running another nameserver (or another instance of dnsmasq) on
the same machine. Setting this option also enables multiple in-
stances of dnsmasq which provide DHCP service to run in the same
machine.
--bind-dynamic
Enable a network mode which is a hybrid between --bind-interfaces
and the default. Dnsmasq binds the address of individual inter-
faces, allowing multiple dnsmasq instances, but if new interfaces
or addresses appear, it automatically listens on those (subject
to any access-control configuration). This makes dynamically cre-
ated interfaces work in the same way as the default. Implementing
this option requires non-standard networking APIs and it is only
available under Linux. On other platforms it falls-back to
--bind-interfaces mode.
-y, --localise-queries
Return answers to DNS queries from /etc/hosts and --interface-
name and --dynamic-host which depend on the interface over which
the query was received. If a name has more than one address asso-
ciated with it, and at least one of those addresses is on the
same subnet as the interface to which the query was sent, then
return only the address(es) on that subnet and return all the
available addresses otherwise. This allows for a server to have
multiple addresses in /etc/hosts corresponding to each of its in-
terfaces, and hosts will get the correct address based on which
network they are attached to. Currently this facility is limited
to IPv4.
-b, --bogus-priv
Bogus private reverse lookups. All reverse lookups for private IP
ranges (ie 192.168.x.x, etc) which are not found in /etc/hosts or
the DHCP leases file are answered with "no such domain" rather
than being forwarded upstream. The set of prefixes affected is
the list given in RFC6303, for IPv4 and IPv6.
-V, --alias=[<old-ip>]|[<start-ip>-<end-ip>],<new-ip>[,<mask>]
Modify IPv4 addresses returned from upstream nameservers; old-ip
is replaced by new-ip. If the optional mask is given then any ad-
dress which matches the masked old-ip will be re-written. So, for
instance --alias=1.2.3.0,6.7.8.0,255.255.255.0 will map 1.2.3.56
to 6.7.8.56 and 1.2.3.67 to 6.7.8.67. This is what Cisco PIX
routers call "DNS doctoring". If the old IP is given as range,
then only addresses in the range, rather than a whole subnet, are
re-written. So
--alias=192.168.0.10-192.168.0.40,10.0.0.0,255.255.255.0 maps
192.168.0.10->192.168.0.40 to 10.0.0.10->10.0.0.40
-B, --bogus-nxdomain=<ipaddr>[/prefix]
Transform replies which contain the specified address or subnet
into "No such domain" replies. IPv4 and IPv6 are supported. This
is intended to counteract a devious move made by Verisign in Sep-
tember 2003 when they started returning the address of an adver-
tising web page in response to queries for unregistered names,
instead of the correct NXDOMAIN response. This option tells dns-
masq to fake the correct response when it sees this behaviour. As
at Sept 2003 the IP address being returned by Verisign is
64.94.110.11
--ignore-address=<ipaddr>[/prefix]
Ignore replies to A or AAAA queries which include the specified
address or subnet. No error is generated, dnsmasq simply contin-
ues to listen for another reply. This is useful to defeat block-
ing strategies which rely on quickly supplying a forged answer to
a DNS request for certain domain, before the correct answer can
arrive.
-f, --filterwin2k
Later versions of windows make periodic DNS requests which don't
get sensible answers from the public DNS and can cause problems
by triggering dial-on-demand links. This flag turns on an option
to filter such requests. The requests blocked are for records of
type ANY where the requested name has underscores, to catch LDAP
requests, and for all records of types SOA and SRV.
--filter-A
Remove A records from answers. No IPv4 addresses will be re-
turned.
--filter-AAAA
Remove AAAA records from answers. No IPv6 addresses will be re-
turned.
--filter-rr=<rrtype>[,<rrtype>...]
Remove records of the specified type(s) from answers. The other-
wise-nonsensical --filter-rr=ANY has a special meaning: it fil-
ters replies to queries for type ANY. Everything other than A,
AAAA, MX and CNAME records are removed. Since ANY queries with
forged source addresses can be used in DNS amplification attacks
(replies to ANY queries can be large) this defangs such attacks,
whilst still supporting the one remaining possible use of ANY
queries. See RFC 8482 para 4.3 for details.
--cache-rr=<rrtype>[,<rrtype>...]
By default, dnsmasq caches A, AAAA, CNAME and SRV DNS record
types. This option adds other record types to the cache. The RR-
type can be given as a name such as TXT or MX or a decimal num-
ber. A single --cache-rr option can take a comma-separated list
of RR-types and more than one --cache-rr option is allowed. Use
--cache-rr=ANY to enable caching for all RR-types.
-r, --resolv-file=<file>
Read the IP addresses of the upstream nameservers from <file>,
instead of /etc/resolv.conf. For the format of this file see re-
solv.conf(5). The only lines relevant to dnsmasq are nameserver
ones. Dnsmasq can be told to poll more than one resolv.conf file,
the first file name specified overrides the default, subsequent
ones add to the list. This is only allowed when polling; the file
with the currently latest modification time is the one used.
-R, --no-resolv
Don't read /etc/resolv.conf. Get upstream servers only from the
command line or the dnsmasq configuration file.
-1, --enable-dbus[=<service-name>]
Allow dnsmasq configuration to be updated via DBus method calls.
The configuration which can be changed is upstream DNS servers
(and corresponding domains) and cache clear. Requires that dns-
masq has been built with DBus support. If the service name is
given, dnsmasq provides service at that name, rather than the de-
fault which is uk.org.thekelleys.dnsmasq
--enable-ubus[=<service-name>]
Enable dnsmasq UBus interface. It sends notifications via UBus on
DHCPACK and DHCPRELEASE events. Furthermore it offers metrics and
allows configuration of Linux connection track mark based filter-
ing. When DNS query filtering based on Linux connection track
marks is enabled UBus notifications are generated for each re-
solved or filtered DNS query. Requires that dnsmasq has been
built with UBus support. If the service name is given, dnsmasq
provides service at that namespace, rather than the default which
is dnsmasq
-o, --strict-order
By default, dnsmasq will send queries to any of the upstream
servers it knows about and tries to favour servers that are known
to be up. Setting this flag forces dnsmasq to try each query with
each server strictly in the order they appear in /etc/resolv.conf
--all-servers
By default, when dnsmasq has more than one upstream server avail-
able, it will send queries to just one server. Setting this flag
forces dnsmasq to send all queries to all available servers. The
reply from the server which answers first will be returned to the
original requester.
--dns-loop-detect
Enable code to detect DNS forwarding loops; ie the situation
where a query sent to one of the upstream server eventually re-
turns as a new query to the dnsmasq instance. The process works
by generating TXT queries of the form <hex>.test and sending them
to each upstream server. The hex is a UID which encodes the in-
stance of dnsmasq sending the query and the upstream server to
which it was sent. If the query returns to the server which sent
it, then the upstream server through which it was sent is dis-
abled and this event is logged. Each time the set of upstream
servers changes, the test is re-run on all of them, including
ones which were previously disabled.
--stop-dns-rebind
Reject (and log) addresses from upstream nameservers which are in
the private ranges. This blocks an attack where a browser behind
a firewall is used to probe machines on the local network. For
IPv6, the private range covers the IPv4-mapped addresses in pri-
vate space plus all link-local (LL) and site-local (ULA) ad-
dresses.
--rebind-localhost-ok
Exempt 127.0.0.0/8 and ::1 from rebinding checks. This address
range is returned by realtime black hole servers, so blocking it
may disable these services.
--rebind-domain-ok=[<domain>]|[[/<domain>/[<domain>/]
Do not detect and block dns-rebind on queries to these domains.
The argument may be either a single domain, or multiple domains
surrounded by '/', like the --server syntax, eg. --rebind-do-
main-ok=/domain1/domain2/domain3/
-n, --no-poll
Don't poll /etc/resolv.conf for changes.
--clear-on-reload
Whenever /etc/resolv.conf is re-read or the upstream servers are
set via DBus, clear the DNS cache. This is useful when new name-
servers may have different data than that held in cache.
-D, --domain-needed
Tells dnsmasq to never forward A or AAAA queries for plain names,
without dots or domain parts, to upstream nameservers. If the
name is not known from /etc/hosts or DHCP then a "not found" an-
swer is returned.
-S, --local, --server=[/[<domain>]/[domain/]][<server>[#<port>]][@<in-
terface>][@<source-ip>[#<port>]]
Specify upstream servers directly. Setting this flag does not
suppress reading of /etc/resolv.conf, use --no-resolv to do that.
If one or more optional domains are given, that server is used
only for those domains and they are queried only using the speci-
fied server. This is intended for private nameservers: if you
have a nameserver on your network which deals with names of the
form xxx.internal.thekelleys.org.uk at 192.168.1.1 then giving
the flag --server=/internal.thekelleys.org.uk/192.168.1.1 will
send all queries for internal machines to that nameserver, every-
thing else will go to the servers in /etc/resolv.conf. DNSSEC
validation is turned off for such private nameservers, UNLESS a
--trust-anchor is specified for the domain in question. An empty
domain specification, // has the special meaning of "unqualified
names only" ie names without any dots in them. A non-standard
port may be specified as part of the IP address using a # charac-
ter. More than one --server flag is allowed, with repeated do-
main or ipaddr parts as required.
More specific domains take precedence over less specific domains,
so: --server=/google.com/1.2.3.4 --server=/www.google.com/2.3.4.5
will send queries for google.com and gmail.google.com to 1.2.3.4,
but www.google.com will go to 2.3.4.5
Matching of domains is normally done on complete labels, so
/google.com/ matches google.com and www.google.com but NOT super-
google.com. This can be overridden with a * at the start of a
pattern only: /*google.com/ will match google.com and
www.google.com AND supergoogle.com. The non-wildcard form has
priority, so if /google.com/ and /*google.com/ are both specified
then google.com and www.google.com will match /google.com/ and
/*google.com/ will only match supergoogle.com.
For historical reasons, the pattern /.google.com/ is equivalent
to /google.com/ if you wish to match any subdomain of google.com
but NOT google.com itself, use /*.google.com/
The special server address '#' means, "use the standard servers",
so --server=/google.com/1.2.3.4 --server=/www.google.com/# will
send queries for google.com and its subdomains to 1.2.3.4, except
www.google.com (and its subdomains) which will be forwarded as
usual.
Also permitted is a -S flag which gives a domain but no IP ad-
dress; this tells dnsmasq that a domain is local and it may an-
swer queries from /etc/hosts or DHCP but should never forward
queries on that domain to any upstream servers. --local is a
synonym for --server to make configuration files clearer in this
case.
IPv6 addresses may include an %interface scope-id, eg
fe80::202:a412:4512:7bbf%eth0.
The optional string after the @ character tells dnsmasq how to
set the source of the queries to this nameserver. It can either
be an ip-address, an interface name or both. The ip-address
should belong to the machine on which dnsmasq is running, other-
wise this server line will be logged and then ignored. If an in-
terface name is given, then queries to the server will be forced
via that interface; if an ip-address is given then the source ad-
dress of the queries will be set to that address; and if both are
given then a combination of ip-address and interface name will be
used to steer requests to the server. The query-port flag is ig-
nored for any servers which have a source address specified but
the port may be specified directly as part of the source address.
Forcing queries to an interface is not implemented on all plat-
forms supported by dnsmasq.
Upstream servers may be specified with a hostname rather than an
IP address. In this case, dnsmasq will try to use the system re-
solver to get the IP address of a server during startup. If name
resolution fails, starting dnsmasq fails, too. If the system's
configuration is such that the system resolver sends DNS queries
through the dnsmasq instance which is starting up then this will
time-out and fail.
--rev-server=<ip-address>[/<prefix-len>][,<server>][#<port>][@<inter-
face>][@<source-ip>[#<port>]]
This is functionally the same as --server, but provides some syn-
tactic sugar to make specifying address-to-name queries easier.
For example --rev-server=1.2.3.0/24,192.168.0.1 is exactly equiv-
alent to --server=/3.2.1.in-addr.arpa/192.168.0.1 Allowed prefix
lengths are 1-32 (IPv4) and 1-128 (IPv6). If the prefix length is
omitted, dnsmasq substitutes either 32 (IPv4) or 128 (IPv6).
-A, --address=/<domain>[/<domain>...]/[<ipaddr>]
Specify an IP address to return for any host in the given do-
mains. A (or AAAA) queries in the domains are never forwarded
and always replied to with the specified IP address which may be
IPv4 or IPv6. To give multiple addresses or both IPv4 and IPv6
addresses for a domain, use repeated --address flags. Note that
/etc/hosts and DHCP leases override this for individual names. A
common use of this is to redirect the entire doubleclick.net do-
main to some friendly local web server to avoid banner ads. The
domain specification works in the same way as for --server, with
the additional facility that /#/ matches any domain. Thus --ad-
dress=/#/1.2.3.4 will always return 1.2.3.4 for any query not an-
swered from /etc/hosts or DHCP and not sent to an upstream name-
server by a more specific --server directive. As for --server,
one or more domains with no address returns a no-such-domain an-
swer, so --address=/example.com/ is equivalent to --server=/exam-
ple.com/ and returns NXDOMAIN for example.com and all its subdo-
mains. An address specified as '#' translates to the NULL address
of 0.0.0.0 and its IPv6 equivalent of :: so --address=/exam-
ple.com/# will return NULL addresses for example.com and its sub-
domains. This is partly syntactic sugar for --address=/exam-
ple.com/0.0.0.0 and --address=/example.com/:: but is also more
efficient than including both as separate configuration lines.
Note that NULL addresses normally work in the same way as local-
host, so beware that clients looking up these names are likely to
end up talking to themselves.
Note that the behaviour for queries which don't match the speci-
fied address literal changed in version 2.86. Previous versions,
configured with (eg) --address=/example.com/1.2.3.4 and then
queried for a RR type other than A would return a NoData answer.
From 2.86, the query is sent upstream. To restore the pre-2.86
behaviour, use the configuration --address=/example.com/1.2.3.4
--local=/example.com/
--ipset=/<domain>[/<domain>...]/<ipset>[,<ipset>...]
Places the resolved IP addresses of queries for one or more do-
mains in the specified Netfilter IP set. If multiple setnames are
given, then the addresses are placed in each of them, subject to
the limitations of an IP set (IPv4 addresses cannot be stored in
an IPv6 IP set and vice versa). Domains and subdomains are
matched in the same way as --address. These IP sets must already
exist. See ipset(8) for more details.
--nftset=/<domain>[/<domain>...]/[(6|4)#[<family>#]<ta-
ble>#<set>[,[(6|4)#[<family>#]<table>#<set>]...]
Similar to the --ipset option, but accepts one or more nftables
sets to add IP addresses into. These sets must already exist.
See nft(8) for more details. The family, table and set are passed
directly to the nft. If the spec starts with 4# or 6# then only A
or AAAA records respectively are added to the set. Since an nft-
set can hold only IPv4 or IPv6 addresses, this avoids errors be-
ing logged for addresses of the wrong type.
--connmark-allowlist-enable[=<mask>]
Enables filtering of incoming DNS queries with associated Linux
connection track marks according to individual allowlists config-
ured via a series of --connmark-allowlist options. Disallowed
queries are not forwarded; they are rejected with a REFUSED error
code. DNS queries are only allowed if they do not have an asso-
ciated Linux connection track mark, or if the queried domains
match the configured DNS patterns for the associated Linux con-
nection track mark. If no allowlist is configured for a Linux
connection track mark, all DNS queries associated with that mark
are rejected. If a mask is specified, Linux connection track
marks are first bitwise ANDed with the given mask before being
processed.
--connmark-allowlist=<connmark>[/<mask>][,<pattern>[/<pattern>...]]
Configures the DNS patterns that are allowed in DNS queries asso-
ciated with the given Linux connection track mark. If a mask is
specified, Linux connection track marks are first bitwise ANDed
with the given mask before they are compared to the given connec-
tion track mark. Patterns follow the syntax of DNS names, but
additionally allow the wildcard character "*" to be used up to
twice per label to match 0 or more characters within that label.
Note that the wildcard never matches a dot (e.g., "*.example.com"
matches "api.example.com" but not "api.us.example.com"). Patterns
must be fully qualified, i.e., consist of at least two labels.
The final label must not be fully numeric, and must not be the
"local" pseudo-TLD. A pattern must end with at least two literal
(non-wildcard) labels. Instead of a pattern, "*" can be speci-
fied to disable allowlist filtering for a given Linux connection
track mark entirely.
-m, --mx-host=<mx name>[[,<hostname>],<preference>]
Return an MX record named <mx name> pointing to the given host-
name (if given), or the host specified in the --mx-target switch
or, if that switch is not given, the host on which dnsmasq is
running. The default is useful for directing mail from systems on
a LAN to a central server. The preference value is optional, and
defaults to 1 if not given. More than one MX record may be given
for a host.
-t, --mx-target=<hostname>
Specify the default target for the MX record returned by dnsmasq.
See --mx-host. If --mx-target is given, but not --mx-host, then
dnsmasq returns a MX record containing the MX target for MX
queries on the hostname of the machine on which dnsmasq is run-
ning.
-e, --selfmx
Return an MX record pointing to itself for each local machine.
Local machines are those in /etc/hosts or with DHCP leases.
-L, --localmx
Return an MX record pointing to the host given by --mx-target (or
the machine on which dnsmasq is running) for each local machine.
Local machines are those in /etc/hosts or with DHCP leases.
-W, --srv-host=<_service>.<_prot>.[<domain>],[<target>[,<port>[,<prior-
ity>[,<weight>]]]]
Return a SRV DNS record. See RFC2782 for details. If not sup-
plied, the domain defaults to that given by --domain. The de-
fault for the target domain is empty, and the default for port is
one and the defaults for weight and priority are zero. Be careful
if transposing data from BIND zone files: the port, weight and
priority numbers are in a different order. More than one SRV
record for a given service/domain is allowed, all that match are
returned.
--host-record=<name>[,<name>....],[<IPv4-address>],[<IPv6-ad-
dress>][,<TTL>]
Add A, AAAA and PTR records to the DNS. This adds one or more
names to the DNS with associated IPv4 (A) and IPv6 (AAAA)
records. A name may appear in more than one --host-record and
therefore be assigned more than one address. Only the first ad-
dress creates a PTR record linking the address to the name. This
is the same rule as is used reading hosts-files. --host-record
options are considered to be read before host-files, so a name
appearing there inhibits PTR-record creation if it appears in
hosts-file also. Unlike hosts-files, names are not expanded, even
when --expand-hosts is in effect. Short and long names may appear
in the same --host-record, eg. --host-record=laptop,lap-
top.thekelleys.org,192.168.0.1,1234::100
If the time-to-live is given, it overrides the default, which is
zero or the value of --local-ttl. The value is a positive integer
and gives the time-to-live in seconds.
--dynamic-host=<name>,[IPv4-address],[IPv6-address],<interface>
Add A, AAAA and PTR records to the DNS in the same subnet as the
specified interface. The address is derived from the network part
of each address associated with the interface, and the host part
from the specified address. For example --dynamic-host=exam-
ple.com,0.0.0.8,eth0 will, when eth0 has the address 192.168.78.x
and netmask 255.255.255.0 give the name example.com an A record
for 192.168.78.8. The same principle applies to IPv6 addresses.
Note that if an interface has more than one address, more than
one A or AAAA record will be created. The TTL of the records is
always zero, and any changes to interface addresses will be imme-
diately reflected in them.
-Y, --txt-record=<name>[[,<text>],<text>]
Return a TXT DNS record. The value of TXT record is a set of
strings, so any number may be included, delimited by commas; use
quotes to put commas into a string. Note that the maximum length
of a single string is 255 characters, longer strings are split
into 255 character chunks.
--ptr-record=<name>[,<target>]
Return a PTR DNS record.
--naptr-record=<name>,<order>,<preference>,<flags>,<service>,<reg-
exp>[,<replacement>]
Return an NAPTR DNS record, as specified in RFC3403.
--caa-record=<name>,<flags>,<tag>,<value>
Return a CAA DNS record, as specified in RFC6844.
--cname=<cname>,[<cname>,]<target>[,<TTL>]
Return a CNAME record which indicates that <cname> is really
<target>. There is a significant limitation on the target; it
must be a DNS record which is known to dnsmasq and NOT a DNS
record which comes from an upstream server. The cname must be
unique, but it is permissible to have more than one cname point-
ing to the same target. Indeed it's possible to declare multiple
cnames to a target in a single line, like so:
--cname=cname1,cname2,target
If the time-to-live is given, it overrides the default, which is
zero or the value of --local-ttl. The value is a positive integer
and gives the time-to-live in seconds.
--dns-rr=<name>,<RR-number>,[<hex data>]
Return an arbitrary DNS Resource Record. The number is the type
of the record (which is always in the C_IN class). The value of
the record is given by the hex data, which may be of the form
01:23:45 or 01 23 45 or 012345 or any mixture of these.
--interface-name=<name>,<interface>[/4|/6]
Return DNS records associating the name with the address(es) of
the given interface. This flag specifies an A or AAAA record for
the given name in the same way as an /etc/hosts line, except that
the address is not constant, but taken from the given interface.
The interface may be followed by "/4" or "/6" to specify that
only IPv4 or IPv6 addresses of the interface should be used. If
the interface is down, not configured or non-existent, an empty
record is returned. The matching PTR record is also created, map-
ping the interface address to the name. More than one name may be
associated with an interface address by repeating the flag; in
that case the first instance is used for the reverse address-to-
name mapping. Note that a name used in --interface-name may not
appear in /etc/hosts.
--synth-domain=<domain>,<address range>[,<prefix>[*]]
Create artificial A/AAAA and PTR records for an address range.
The records either seqential numbers or the address, with periods
(or colons for IPv6) replaced with dashes.
An examples should make this clearer. First sequential numbers.
--synth-domain=thekelleys.org.uk,192.168.0.50,192.168.0.70,inter-
nal-* results in the name internal-0.thekelleys.org.uk. returning
192.168.0.50, internal-1.thekelleys.org.uk returning 192.168.0.51
and so on. (note the *) The same principle applies to IPv6 ad-
dresses (where the numbers may be very large). Reverse lookups
from address to name behave as expected.
Second, --synth-domain=thekelleys.org.uk,192.168.0.0/24,internal-
(no *) will result in a query for internal-192-168-0-56.thekel-
leys.org.uk returning 192.168.0.56 and a reverse query vice
versa. The same applies to IPv6; the representation doesn't use
the :: compression feature or the special representation of V4
mapped IPv6 addresses as these can generate illegal domain names,
so all domains are of the form inter-
nal-1000-0000-0000-0000-0000-0000-0000-0008.example.com
The address range can be of the form <start address>,<end ad-
dress> or <ip address>/<prefix-length> in both forms of the op-
tion. For IPv6 the start and end addresses must fall in the same
/64 network, or prefix-length must be greater than or equal to 64
except that shorter prefix lengths than 64 are allowed only if
non-sequential names are in use.
--dumpfile=<path/to/file>
Specify the location of a pcap-format file which dnsmasq uses to
dump copies of network packets for debugging purposes. If the
file exists when dnsmasq starts, it is not deleted; new packets
are added to the end. The file may be a named-pipe which Wire-
shark is listening to.
--dumpmask=<mask>
Specify which types of packets should be added to the dumpfile.
The argument should be the OR of the bitmasks for each type of
packet to be dumped: it can be specified in hex by preceding the
number with 0x in the normal way. Each time a packet is written
to the dumpfile, dnsmasq logs the packet sequence and the mask
representing its type. The current types are: 0x0001 - DNS
queries from clients, 0x0002 DNS replies to clients, 0x0004 - DNS
queries to upstream, 0x0008 - DNS replies from upstream, 0x0010 -
queries send upstream for DNSSEC validation, 0x0020 - replies to
queries for DNSSEC validation, 0x0040 - replies to client queries
which fail DNSSEC validation, 0x0080 replies to queries for
DNSSEC validation which fail validation, 0x1000 - DHCPv4, 0x2000
- DHCPv6, 0x4000 - Router advertisement, 0x8000 - TFTP.
--add-mac[=base64|text]
Add the MAC address of the requestor to DNS queries which are
forwarded upstream. This may be used to DNS filtering by the up-
stream server. The MAC address can only be added if the requestor
is on the same subnet as the dnsmasq server. Note that the mecha-
nism used to achieve this (an EDNS0 option) is not yet standard-
ised, so this should be considered experimental. Also note that
exposing MAC addresses in this way may have security and privacy
implications. The warning about caching given for --add-subnet
applies to --add-mac too. An alternative encoding of the MAC, as
base64, is enabled by adding the "base64" parameter and a human-
readable encoding of hex-and-colons is enabled by added the
"text" parameter.
--strip-mac
Remove any MAC address information already in downstream queries
before forwarding upstream.
--add-cpe-id=<string>
Add an arbitrary identifying string to DNS queries which are for-
warded upstream.
--add-subnet[[=[<IPv4 address>/]<IPv4 prefix length>][,[<IPv6 ad-
dress>/]<IPv6 prefix length>]]
Add a subnet address to the DNS queries which are forwarded up-
stream. If an address is specified in the flag, it will be used,
otherwise, the address of the requestor will be used. The amount
of the address forwarded depends on the prefix length parameter:
32 (128 for IPv6) forwards the whole address, zero forwards none
of it but still marks the request so that no upstream nameserver
will add client address information either. The default is zero
for both IPv4 and IPv6. Note that upstream nameservers may be
configured to return different results based on this information,
but the dnsmasq cache does not take account. Caching is therefore
disabled for such replies, unless the subnet address being added
is constant.
For example, --add-subnet=24,96 will add the /24 and /96 subnets
of the requestor for IPv4 and IPv6 requestors, respectively.
--add-subnet=1.2.3.4/24 will add 1.2.3.0/24 for IPv4 requestors
and ::/0 for IPv6 requestors. --add-subnet=1.2.3.4/24,1.2.3.4/24
will add 1.2.3.0/24 for both IPv4 and IPv6 requestors.
--strip-subnet
Remove any subnet address already present in a downstream query
before forwarding it upstream. If --add-subnet is set this also
ensures that any downstream-provided subnet is replaced by the
one added by dnsmasq. Otherwise, dnsmasq will NOT replace an ex-
isting subnet in the query.
--umbrella[=[deviceid:<deviceid>][,orgid:<orgid>][,assetid:<id>]]
Embeds the requestor's IP address in DNS queries forwarded up-
stream. If device id or, asset id or organization id are speci-
fied, the information is included in the forwarded queries and
may be able to be used in filtering policies and reporting. The
order of the id attributes is irrelevant, but they must be sepa-
rated by a comma. Deviceid is a sixteen digit hexadecimal number,
org and asset ids are decimal numbers.
-c, --cache-size=<cachesize>
Set the size of dnsmasq's cache. The default is 150 names. Set-
ting the cache size to zero disables caching. Note: huge cache
size impacts performance.
-N, --no-negcache
Disable negative caching. Negative caching allows dnsmasq to re-
member "no such domain" answers from upstream nameservers and an-
swer identical queries without forwarding them again.
--no-round-robin
Dnsmasq normally permutes the order of A or AAAA records for the
same name on successive queries, for load-balancing. This turns
off that behaviour, so that the records are always returned in
the order that they are received from upstream.
--do-0x20-encode, --no-0x20-encode
Dnsmasq can scramble the case of letters in DNS queries it sends
upstream as a security feature. This technique can interact
badly with rare broken DNS servers which don't preserve the case
of the query in their reply. The first time a reply is returned
which matches the query in all respects except case, a warning
will be logged. If this coincides with DNS not functioning, it is
necessary to disable the feature. As at version 2.91, 0x20 encod-
ing is disabled by default, and must be enabled with
--do-0x20-encode. The default may change in the future, so to be
sure of its status after an upgrade, set --do-0x20-encode or
--no-0x20-encode in your config. --no-0x20-encode overrides --do-
x20-encode or a future default 0x20-encode enable.
--use-stale-cache[=<max TTL excess in s>]
When set, if a DNS name exists in the cache, but its time-to-live
has expired, dnsmasq will return the data anyway. (It attempts to
refresh the data with an upstream query after returning the stale
data.) This can improve speed and reliability. It comes at the
expense of sometimes returning out-of-date data and less effi-
cient cache utilisation, since old data cannot be flushed when
its TTL expires, so the cache becomes mostly least-recently-used.
To mitigate issues caused by massively outdated DNS replies, the
maximum overaging of cached records can be specified in seconds
(defaulting to not serve anything older than one day). Setting
the TTL excess time to zero will serve stale cache data regard-
less how long it has expired.
-0, --dns-forward-max=<queries>
Set the maximum number of concurrent DNS queries. The default
value is 150, which should be fine for most setups. The only
known situation where this needs to be increased is when using
web-server log file resolvers, which can generate large numbers
of concurrent queries. This parameter actually controls the num-
ber of concurrent queries per server group, where a server group
is the set of server(s) associated with a single domain. So if a
domain has it's own server via --server=/example.com/1.2.3.4 and
1.2.3.4 is not responding, but queries for *.example.com cannot
go elsewhere, then other queries will not be affected. On config-
urations with many such server groups and tight resources, this
value may need to be reduced.
--dnssec
Validate DNS replies and cache DNSSEC data. When forwarding DNS
queries, dnsmasq requests the DNSSEC records needed to validate
the replies. The replies are validated and the result returned as
the Authenticated Data bit in the DNS packet. In addition the
DNSSEC records are stored in the cache, making validation by
clients more efficient. Note that validation by clients is the
most secure DNSSEC mode, but for clients unable to do validation,
use of the AD bit set by dnsmasq is useful, provided that the
network between the dnsmasq server and the client is trusted.
Dnsmasq must be compiled with HAVE_DNSSEC enabled, and DNSSEC
trust anchors provided, see --trust-anchor. Because the DNSSEC
validation process uses the cache, it is not permitted to reduce
the cache size below the default when DNSSEC is enabled. The
nameservers upstream of dnsmasq must be DNSSEC-capable, ie capa-
ble of returning DNSSEC records with data. If they are not, then
dnsmasq will not be able to determine the trusted status of an-
swers and this means that DNS service will be entirely broken.
--trust-anchor=<domain>,[<class>,]<key-tag>,<algorithm>,<digest-
type>,<digest>
Provide DS records to act a trust anchors for DNSSEC validation.
Typically these will be the DS record(s) for Key Signing key(s)
(KSK) of the root zone, but trust anchors for limited domains are
also possible. The current root-zone trust anchors may be down-
loaded from https://data.iana.org/root-anchors/root-anchors.xml
--dnssec-check-unsigned[=no]
As a default, dnsmasq checks that unsigned DNS replies are legit-
imate: this entails possible extra queries even for the majority
of DNS zones which are not, at the moment, signed. If --dnssec-
check-unsigned=no appears in the configuration, then such replies
they are assumed to be valid and passed on (without the "authen-
tic data" bit set, of course). This does not protect against an
attacker forging unsigned replies for signed DNS zones, but it is
fast.
Versions of dnsmasq prior to 2.80 defaulted to not checking un-
signed replies, and used --dnssec-check-unsigned to switch this
on. Such configurations will continue to work as before, but
those which used the default of no checking will need to be al-
tered to explicitly select no checking. The new default is be-
cause switching off checking for unsigned replies is inherently
dangerous. Not only does it open the possiblity of forged
replies, but it allows everything to appear to be working even
when the upstream namesevers do not support DNSSEC, and in this
case no DNSSEC validation at all is occurring.
--dnssec-no-timecheck
DNSSEC signatures are only valid for specified time windows, and
should be rejected outside those windows. This generates an in-
teresting chicken-and-egg problem for machines which don't have a
hardware real time clock. For these machines to determine the
correct time typically requires use of NTP and therefore DNS, but
validating DNS requires that the correct time is already known.
Setting this flag removes the time-window checks (but not other
DNSSEC validation.) only until the dnsmasq process receives SIG-
INT. The intention is that dnsmasq should be started with this
flag when the platform determines that reliable time is not cur-
rently available. As soon as reliable time is established, a SIG-
INT should be sent to dnsmasq, which enables time checking, and
purges the cache of DNS records which have not been thoroughly
checked.
Earlier versions of dnsmasq overloaded SIGHUP (which re-reads
much configuration) to also enable time validation.
If dnsmasq is run in debug mode (--no-daemon flag) then SIGINT
retains its usual meaning of terminating the dnsmasq process.
--dnssec-timestamp=<path>
Enables an alternative way of checking the validity of the system
time for DNSSEC (see --dnssec-no-timecheck). In this case, the
system time is considered to be valid once it becomes later than
the timestamp on the specified file. The file is created and its
timestamp set automatically by dnsmasq. The file must be stored
on a persistent filesystem, so that it and its mtime are carried
over system restarts. The timestamp file is created after dnsmasq
has dropped root, so it must be in a location writable by the un-
privileged user that dnsmasq runs as.
--proxy-dnssec
Copy the DNSSEC Authenticated Data bit from upstream servers to
downstream clients. This is an alternative to having dnsmasq
validate DNSSEC, but it depends on the security of the network
between dnsmasq and the upstream servers, and the trustworthiness
of the upstream servers. Note that caching the Authenticated Data
bit correctly in all cases is not technically possible. If the AD
bit is to be relied upon when using this option, then the cache
should be disabled using --cache-size=0. In most cases, enabling
DNSSEC validation within dnsmasq is a better option. See --dnssec
for details.
--dnssec-limits=<limit>[,<limit>.......]
Override the default resource limits applied to DNSSEC valida-
tion. Cryptographic operations are expensive and crafted domains
can DoS a DNSSEC validator by forcing it to do hundreds of thou-
sands of such operations. To avoid this, the dnsmasq validation
code applies limits on how much work will be expended in valida-
tion. If any of the limits are exceeded, the validation will fail
and the domain treated as BOGUS. There are four limits, in or-
der(default values in parens): number a signature validation
fails per RRset(20), number of signature validations and hash
computations per query(200), number of sub-queries to fetch DS
and DNSKEY RRsets per query(40), and the number of iterations in
a NSEC3 record(150). The maximum values reached during valida-
tion are stored, and dumped as part of the stats generated by SI-
GUSR1. Supplying a limit value of 0 leaves the default in place,
so --dnssec-limits=0,0,20 sets the number of sub-queries to 20
whilst leaving the other limits at default values.
--dnssec-debug
Set debugging mode for the DNSSEC validation, set the Checking
Disabled bit on upstream queries, and don't convert replies which
do not validate to responses with a return code of SERVFAIL. Note
that setting this may affect DNS behaviour in bad ways, it is not
an extra-logging flag and should not be set in production.
--auth-zone=<domain>[,<subnet>[/<prefix length>][,<subnet>[/<prefix
length>].....][,exclude:<subnet>[/<prefix length>]].....]
Define a DNS zone for which dnsmasq acts as authoritative server.
Locally defined DNS records which are in the domain will be
served. If subnet(s) are given, A and AAAA records must be in one
of the specified subnets.
As alternative to directly specifying the subnets, it's possible
to give the name of an interface, in which case the subnets im-
plied by that interface's configured addresses and netmask/pre-
fix-length are used; this is useful when using constructed DHCP
ranges as the actual address is dynamic and not known when con-
figuring dnsmasq. The interface addresses may be confined to only
IPv6 addresses using <interface>/6 or to only IPv4 using <inter-
face>/4. This is useful when an interface has dynamically deter-
mined global IPv6 addresses which should appear in the zone, but
RFC1918 IPv4 addresses which should not. Interface-name and ad-
dress-literal subnet specifications may be used freely in the
same --auth-zone declaration.
It's possible to exclude certain IP addresses from responses. It
can be used, to make sure that answers contain only global route-
able IP addresses (by excluding loopback, RFC1918 and ULA ad-
dresses).
The subnet(s) are also used to define in-addr.arpa and ip6.arpa
domains which are served for reverse-DNS queries. If not speci-
fied, the prefix length defaults to 24 for IPv4 and 64 for IPv6.
For IPv4 subnets, the prefix length should be have the value 8,
16 or 24 unless you are familiar with RFC 2317 and have arranged
the in-addr.arpa delegation accordingly. Note that if no subnets
are specified, then no reverse queries are answered.
--auth-soa=<serial>[,<hostmaster>[,<refresh>[,<retry>[,<expiry>]]]]
Specify fields in the SOA record associated with authoritative
zones. Note that this is optional, all the values are set to sane
defaults.
--auth-sec-servers=<domain>[,<domain>[,<domain>...]]
Specify any secondary servers for a zone for which dnsmasq is au-
thoritative. These servers must be configured to get zone data
from dnsmasq by zone transfer, and answer queries for the same
authoritative zones as dnsmasq.
--auth-peer=<ip-address>[,<ip-address>[,<ip-address>...]]
Specify the addresses of secondary servers which are allowed to
initiate zone transfer (AXFR) requests for zones for which dns-
masq is authoritative. If this option is not given but --auth-
sec-servers is, then AXFR requests will be accepted from any sec-
ondary. Specifying --auth-peer without --auth-sec-servers enables
zone transfer but does not advertise the secondary in NS records
returned by dnsmasq.
--conntrack
Read the Linux connection track mark associated with incoming DNS
queries and set the same mark value on upstream traffic used to
answer those queries. This allows traffic generated by dnsmasq to
be associated with the queries which cause it, useful for band-
width accounting and firewalling. Dnsmasq must have conntrack
support compiled in and the kernel must have conntrack support
included and configured. This option cannot be combined with
--query-port.
-F, --dhcp-range=[tag:<tag>[,tag:<tag>],][set:<tag>,]<start-addr>[,<end-
addr>|<mode>[,<netmask>[,<broadcast>]]][,<lease time>]
-F, --dhcp-range=[tag:<tag>[,tag:<tag>],][set:<tag>,]<start-
IPv6addr>[,<end-IPv6addr>|constructor:<interface>][,<mode>][,<prefix-
len>][,<lease time>]
Enable the DHCP server. Addresses will be given out from the
range <start-addr> to <end-addr> and from statically defined ad-
dresses given in --dhcp-host options. If the lease time is given,
then leases will be given for that length of time. The lease time
is in seconds, or minutes (eg 45m) or hours (eg 1h) or days (2d)
or weeks (1w) or "infinite". If not given, the default lease time
is one hour for IPv4 and one day for IPv6. The minimum lease time
is two minutes. For IPv6 ranges, the lease time maybe "depre-
cated"; this sets the preferred lifetime sent in a DHCP lease or
router advertisement to zero, which causes clients to use other
addresses, if available, for new connections as a prelude to
renumbering.
This option may be repeated, with different addresses, to enable
DHCP service to more than one network. For directly connected
networks (ie, networks on which the machine running dnsmasq has
an interface) the netmask is optional: dnsmasq will determine it
from the interface configuration. For networks which receive DHCP
service via a relay agent, dnsmasq cannot determine the netmask
itself, so it should be specified, otherwise dnsmasq will have to
guess, based on the class (A, B or C) of the network address. The
broadcast address is always optional. It is always allowed to
have more than one --dhcp-range in a single subnet.
For IPv6, the parameters are slightly different: instead of net-
mask and broadcast address, there is an optional prefix length
which must be equal to or larger then the prefix length on the
local interface. If not given, this defaults to 64. Unlike the
IPv4 case, the prefix length is not automatically derived from
the interface configuration. The minimum size of the prefix
length is 64.
IPv6 (only) supports another type of range. In this, the start
address and optional end address contain only the network part
(ie ::1) and they are followed by constructor:<interface>. This
forms a template which describes how to create ranges, based on
the addresses assigned to the interface. For instance
--dhcp-range=::1,::400,constructor:eth0
will look for addresses on eth0 and then create a range from
<network>::1 to <network>::400. If the interface is assigned more
than one network, then the corresponding ranges will be automati-
cally created, and then deprecated and finally removed again as
the address is deprecated and then deleted. The interface name
may have a final "*" wildcard. Note that just any address on eth0
will not do: it must not be an autoconfigured or privacy address,
or be deprecated.
If a --dhcp-range is only being used for stateless DHCP and/or
SLAAC, then the address can be simply ::
--dhcp-range=::,constructor:eth0
The optional set:<tag> sets an alphanumeric label which marks
this network so that DHCP options may be specified on a per-net-
work basis. When it is prefixed with 'tag:' instead, then its
meaning changes from setting a tag to matching it. Only one tag
may be set, but more than one tag may be matched.
The optional <mode> keyword may be static which tells dnsmasq to
enable DHCP for the network specified, but not to dynamically al-
locate IP addresses: only hosts which have static addresses given
via --dhcp-host or from /etc/ethers will be served. A static-only
subnet with address all zeros may be used as a "catch-all" ad-
dress to enable replies to all Information-request packets on a
subnet which is provided with stateless DHCPv6, ie --dhcp-
range=::,static
For IPv4, the <mode> may be proxy in which case dnsmasq will pro-
vide proxy-DHCP on the specified subnet. (See --pxe-prompt and
--pxe-service for details.)
For IPv6, the mode may be some combination of ra-only, slaac, ra-
names, ra-stateless, ra-advrouter, off-link.
ra-only tells dnsmasq to offer Router Advertisement only on this
subnet, and not DHCP.
slaac tells dnsmasq to offer Router Advertisement on this subnet
and to set the A bit in the router advertisement, so that the
client will use SLAAC addresses. When used with a DHCP range or
static DHCP address this results in the client having both a
DHCP-assigned and a SLAAC address.
ra-stateless sends router advertisements with the O and A bits
set, and provides a stateless DHCP service. The client will use a
SLAAC address, and use DHCP for other configuration information.
ra-names enables a mode which gives DNS names to dual-stack hosts
which do SLAAC for IPv6. Dnsmasq uses the host's IPv4 lease to
derive the name, network segment and MAC address and assumes that
the host will also have an IPv6 address calculated using the
SLAAC algorithm, on the same network segment. The address is
pinged, and if a reply is received, an AAAA record is added to
the DNS for this IPv6 address. Note that this is only happens for
directly-connected networks, (not one doing DHCP via a relay) and
it will not work if a host is using privacy extensions. ra-names
can be combined with ra-stateless and slaac.
ra-advrouter enables a mode where router address(es) rather than
prefix(es) are included in the advertisements. This is described
in RFC-3775 section 7.2 and is used in mobile IPv6. In this mode
the interval option is also included, as described in RFC-3775
section 7.3.
off-link tells dnsmasq to advertise the prefix without the on-
link (aka L) bit set.
-G, --dhcp-
host=[<hwaddr>][,id:<client_id>|*][,set:<tag>][,tag:<tag>][,<ipaddr>][,<host-
name>][,<lease_time>][,ignore]
Specify per host parameters for the DHCP server. This allows a
machine with a particular hardware address to be always allocated
the same hostname, IP address and lease time. A hostname speci-
fied like this overrides any supplied by the DHCP client on the
machine. It is also allowable to omit the hardware address and
include the hostname, in which case the IP address and lease
times will apply to any machine claiming that name. For example
--dhcp-host=00:20:e0:3b:13:af,wap,infinite tells dnsmasq to give
the machine with hardware address 00:20:e0:3b:13:af the name wap,
and an infinite DHCP lease. --dhcp-host=lap,192.168.0.199 tells
dnsmasq to always allocate the machine lap the IP address
192.168.0.199.
Addresses allocated like this are not constrained to be in the
range given by the --dhcp-range option, but they must be in the
same subnet as some valid dhcp-range. For subnets which don't
need a pool of dynamically allocated addresses, use the "static"
keyword in the --dhcp-range declaration.
It is allowed to use client identifiers (called client DUID in
IPv6-land) rather than hardware addresses to identify hosts by
prefixing with 'id:'. Thus: --dhcp-host=id:01:02:03:04,.....
refers to the host with client identifier 01:02:03:04. It is also
allowed to specify the client ID as text, like this: --dhcp-
host=id:clientidastext,.....
A single --dhcp-host may contain an IPv4 address or one or more
IPv6 addresses, or both. IPv6 addresses must be bracketed by
square brackets thus: --dhcp-host=laptop,[1234::56] IPv6 ad-
dresses may contain only the host-identifier part: --dhcp-
host=laptop,[::56] in which case they act as wildcards in con-
structed DHCP ranges, with the appropriate network part inserted.
For IPv6, an address may include a prefix length: --dhcp-
host=laptop,[1234:50/126] which (in this case) specifies four ad-
dresses, 1234::50 to 1234::53. This (an the ability to specify
multiple addresses) is useful when a host presents either a con-
sistent name or hardware-ID, but varying DUIDs, since it allows
dnsmasq to honour the static address allocation but assign a dif-
ferent adddress for each DUID. This typically occurs when chain
netbooting, as each stage of the chain gets in turn allocates an
address.
Note that in IPv6 DHCP, the hardware address may not be avail-
able, though it normally is for direct-connected clients, or
clients using DHCP relays which support RFC 6939.
For DHCPv4, the special option id:* means "ignore any client-id
and use MAC addresses only." This is useful when a client
presents a client-id sometimes but not others.
If a name appears in /etc/hosts, the associated address can be
allocated to a DHCP lease, but only if a --dhcp-host option spec-
ifying the name also exists. Only one hostname can be given in a
--dhcp-host option, but aliases are possible by using CNAMEs.
(See --cname ). Note that /etc/hosts is NOT used when the DNS
server side of dnsmasq is disabled by setting the DNS server port
to zero.
More than one --dhcp-host can be associated (by name, hardware
address or UID) with a host. Which one is used (and therefore
which address is allocated by DHCP and appears in the DNS) de-
pends on the subnet on which the host last obtained a DHCP lease:
the --dhcp-host with an address within the subnet is used. If
more than one address is within the subnet, the result is unde-
fined. A corollary to this is that the name associated with a
host using --dhcp-host does not appear in the DNS until the host
obtains a DHCP lease.
The special keyword ignore tells dnsmasq never to offer a DHCP
lease to a machine. The machine can be specified by hardware ad-
dress, client ID or hostname. For example: --dhcp-
host=00:20:e0:3b:13:af,ignore. This can be useful when there is
another DHCP server on the network which should be used by some
machines.
The set:<tag> construct sets the tag whenever this --dhcp-host
directive is in use. This can be used to selectively send DHCP
options just for this host. More than one tag can be set in a
--dhcp-host directive (but not in other places where set:<tag> is
allowed). When a host matches any --dhcp-host directive (or one
implied by /etc/ethers) then the special tag known is set. This
allows dnsmasq to be configured to ignore requests from unknown
machines using --dhcp-ignore=tag:!known. If the host matches
only a --dhcp-host directive which cannot be used because it
specifies an address on a different subnet, the tag known-other-
net is set.
The tag:<tag> construct filters which dhcp-host directives are
used. More than one tag can be provided. In this case, the re-
quest must match all tags. Tagged directives are used in prefer-
ence to untagged ones. Note that one of <hwaddr>, <client_id> or
<hostname> still must be specified (can be a wildcard).
Ethernet addresses (but not client-ids) may have wildcard bytes,
so for example --dhcp-host=00:20:e0:3b:13:*,ignore will cause
dnsmasq to ignore the given range of hardware addresses. Note
that the "*" will need to be escaped or quoted on a command line,
but not in the configuration file.
Hardware addresses normally match any network (ARP) type, but it
is possible to restrict them to a single ARP type by preceding
them with the ARP-type (in HEX) and "-". so --dhcp-
host=06-00:20:e0:3b:13:af,1.2.3.4 will only match a Token-Ring
hardware address, since the ARP-address type for token ring is 6.
As a special case, in DHCPv4, it is possible to include more than
one hardware address. eg: --dhcp-
host=11:22:33:44:55:66,12:34:56:78:90:12,192.168.0.2. This al-
lows an IP address to be associated with multiple hardware ad-
dresses, and gives dnsmasq permission to abandon a DHCP lease to
one of the hardware addresses when another one asks for a lease.
Beware that this is a dangerous thing to do: it will only work
reliably if only one of the hardware addresses is active at any
time and there is no way for dnsmasq to enforce this. It is, for
instance, useful to allocate a stable IP address to a laptop
which has both wired and wireless interfaces.
--dhcp-hostsfile=<path>
Read DHCP host information from the specified file. If a direc-
tory is given, then read all the files contained in that direc-
tory in alphabetical order. The file contains information about
one host per line. The format of a line is the same as text to
the right of '=' in --dhcp-host. The advantage of storing DHCP
host information in this file is that it can be changed without
re-starting dnsmasq: the file will be re-read when dnsmasq re-
ceives SIGHUP.
--dhcp-optsfile=<path>
Read DHCP option information from the specified file. If a di-
rectory is given, then read all the files contained in that di-
rectory in alphabetical order. The advantage of using this option
is the same as for --dhcp-hostsfile: the --dhcp-optsfile will be
re-read when dnsmasq receives SIGHUP. Note that it is possible to
encode the information in a --dhcp-boot flag as DHCP options, us-
ing the options names bootfile-name, server-ip-address and tftp-
server. This allows these to be included in a --dhcp-optsfile.
--dhcp-hostsdir=<path>
This is equivalent to --dhcp-hostsfile, except for the following.
The path MUST be a directory, and not an individual file. Changed
or new files within the directory are read automatically, without
the need to send SIGHUP. If a file is deleted or changed after
it has been read by dnsmasq, then the host record it contained
will remain until dnsmasq receives a SIGHUP, or is restarted; ie
host records are only added dynamically. The order in which the
files in a directory are read is not defined.
--dhcp-optsdir=<path>
This is equivalent to --dhcp-optsfile, with the differences noted
for --dhcp-hostsdir.
-Z, --read-ethers
Read /etc/ethers for information about hosts for the DHCP server.
The format of /etc/ethers is a hardware address, followed by ei-
ther a hostname or dotted-quad IP address. When read by dnsmasq
these lines have exactly the same effect as --dhcp-host options
containing the same information. /etc/ethers is re-read when dns-
masq receives SIGHUP. IPv6 addresses are NOT read from
/etc/ethers.
-O, --dhcp-option=[tag:<tag>,[tag:<tag>,]][encap:<opt>,][vi-encap:<en-
terprise>,][vendor:[<vendor-class>],][<opt>|option:<opt-name>|op-
tion6:<opt>|option6:<opt-name>],[<value>[,<value>]]
Send various extra options to DHCP clients. By default, dnsmasq
sends some standard options to DHCP clients, the netmask and
broadcast address are set to the same as the host running dns-
masq, and the DNS server and default route are set to the address
of the machine running dnsmasq. (Equivalent rules apply for
IPv6.) If the domain name option has been set, that is sent.
This configuration allows these defaults to be overridden, or
other options specified. The option to be sent may be given as a
decimal number or as option:<option-name>.
Option numbers are specified in RFC2132 and subsequent RFCs. The
set of option-names known by dnsmasq can be discovered by running
dnsmasq --help dhcp. For example, to set the default route op-
tion to 192.168.4.4, use --dhcp-option=3,192.168.4.4 or --dhcp-
option=option:router,192.168.4.4 and to set the time-server ad-
dress to 192.168.0.4, use --dhcp-option=42,192.168.0.4 or --dhcp-
option=option:ntp-server,192.168.0.4. The special address
0.0.0.0 means "the address of the system running dnsmasq".
An option without data is valid, and includes just the option
without data. (There is only one option with a zero length data
field currently defined for DHCPv4, 80:rapid commit, so this fea-
ture is not very useful in practice). Options for which dnsmasq
normally provides default values can be ommitted by defining the
option with no data. These are netmask, broadcast, router, DNS
server, domainname and hostname. Thus, for DHCPv4 --dhcp-option =
option:router will result in no router option being sent, rather
than the default of the host on which dnsmasq is running. For
DHCPv6, the same is true of the options DNS server and refresh
time.
Data types allowed are comma separated dotted-quad IPv4 ad-
dresses, []-wrapped IPv6 addresses, a decimal number, colon-sepa-
rated hex digits and a text string. If the optional tags are
given then this option is only sent when all the tags are
matched.
Special processing is done on a text argument for option 119, to
conform with RFC 3397. Text or dotted-quad IP addresses as argu-
ments to option 120 are handled as per RFC 3361. Dotted-quad IP
addresses which are followed by a slash and then a netmask size
are encoded as described in RFC 3442.
IPv6 options are specified using the option6: keyword, followed
by the option number or option name. The IPv6 option name space
is disjoint from the IPv4 option name space. IPv6 addresses in
options must be bracketed with square brackets, eg.
--dhcp-option=option6:ntp-server,[1234::56]. For IPv6, [::]
means "the global address of the machine running dnsmasq", whilst
[fd00::] is replaced with the ULA, if it exists, and [fe80::]
with the link-local address.
Be careful: data-type suitability for the option number sent is
not checked. It is quite possible to persuade dnsmasq to gener-
ate illegal DHCP packets with injudicious use of this flag. When
the value is a decimal number, dnsmasq must determine how large
the data item is. It does this by examining the option number
and/or the value, but can be overridden by appending a single
letter flag as follows: b = one byte, s = two bytes, i = four
bytes. This is mainly useful with encapsulated vendor class op-
tions (see below) where dnsmasq cannot determine data size from
the option number. Option data which consists solely of periods
and digits will be interpreted by dnsmasq as an IP address, and
inserted into an option as such. To force a literal string, use
quotes. For instance when using option 66 to send a literal IP
address as TFTP server name, it is necessary to do --dhcp-op-
tion=66,"1.2.3.4".
Encapsulated Vendor-class options may also be specified (IPv4
only) using --dhcp-option: for instance --dhcp-option=vendor:PXE-
Client,1,0.0.0.0 sends the encapsulated vendor class-specific op-
tion "mftp-address=0.0.0.0" to any client whose vendor-class
matches "PXEClient". The vendor-class matching is substring based
(see --dhcp-vendorclass for details). If a vendor-class option
(number 60) is sent by dnsmasq, then that is used for selecting
encapsulated options in preference to any sent by the client. It
is possible to omit the vendorclass completely; --dhcp-op-
tion=vendor:,1,0.0.0.0 in which case the encapsulated option is
always sent.
Options may be encapsulated (IPv4 only) within other options: for
instance --dhcp-option=encap:175, 190, iscsi-client0 will send
option 175, within which is the option 190. If multiple options
are given which are encapsulated with the same option number then
they will be correctly combined into one encapsulated option.
encap: and vendor: may not both be set in the same --dhcp-option.
The final variant on encapsulated options is "Vendor-Identifying
Vendor Options" as specified by RFC3925. These are denoted like
this: --dhcp-option=vi-encap:2, 10, text The number in the vi-en-
cap: section is the IANA enterprise number used to identify this
option. This form of encapsulation is supported in IPv6.
The address 0.0.0.0 is not treated specially in encapsulated op-
tions.
--dhcp-option-force=[tag:<tag>,[tag:<tag>,]][encap:<opt>,][vi-encap:<en-
terprise>,][vendor:[<vendor-class>],]<opt>,[<value>[,<value>]]
This works in exactly the same way as --dhcp-option except that
the option will always be sent, even if the client does not ask
for it in the parameter request list. This is sometimes needed,
for example when sending options to PXELinux.
--dhcp-option-pxe=[tag:<tag>,[tag:<tag>,]][encap:<opt>,][vi-encap:<en-
terprise>,]<opt>,[<value>[,<value>]]
A variant of --dhcp-option which defines options only sent in re-
ply to PXE clients. In addition, such options are sent in reply
to PXE clients when dnsmasq is acting as a PXE proxy, unlike
other options. A typical use-case is option 175, sent to iPXE.
--dhcp-no-override
(IPv4 only) Disable re-use of the DHCP servername and filename
fields as extra option space. If it can, dnsmasq moves the boot
server and filename information (from --dhcp-boot) out of their
dedicated fields into DHCP options. This make extra space avail-
able in the DHCP packet for options but can, rarely, confuse old
or broken clients. This flag forces "simple and safe" behaviour
to avoid problems in such a case.
--dhcp-relay=<local address>[,<server address>[#<server port>]][,<inter-
face]
Configure dnsmasq to do DHCP relay. The local address is an ad-
dress allocated to an interface on the host running dnsmasq. All
DHCP requests arriving on that interface will be relayed to a re-
mote DHCP server at the server address. It is possible to relay
from a single local address to multiple remote servers by using
multiple --dhcp-relay configs with the same local address and
different server addresses. A server address must be an IP lit-
eral address, not a domain name. If the server address is omit-
ted, the request will be forwarded by broadcast (IPv4) or multi-
cast (IPv6). In this case the interface must be given and not be
wildcard. The server address may specify a non-standard port to
relay to. If this is used then --dhcp-proxy should likely also be
set, otherwise parts of the DHCP conversation which do not pass
through the relay will be delivered to the wrong port.
Access control for DHCP clients has the same rules as for the
DHCP server, see --interface, --except-interface, etc. The op-
tional interface name in the --dhcp-relay config has a different
function: it controls on which interface DHCP replies from the
server will be accepted. This is intended for configurations
which have three interfaces: one being relayed from, a second
connecting the DHCP server, and a third untrusted network, typi-
cally the wider internet. It avoids the possibility of spoof
replies arriving via this third interface.
It is allowed to have dnsmasq act as a DHCP server on one set of
interfaces and relay from a disjoint set of interfaces. Note that
whilst it is quite possible to write configurations which appear
to act as a server and a relay on the same interface, this is not
supported: the relay function will take precedence.
Both DHCPv4 and DHCPv6 relay is supported. It's not possible to
relay DHCPv4 to a DHCPv6 server or vice-versa.
The DHCP relay function for IPv6 includes the ability to snoop
prefix-delegation from relayed DHCP transactions. See --dhcp-
script for details.
-U, --dhcp-vendorclass=set:<tag>,[enterprise:<IANA-enterprise num-
ber>,]<vendor-class>
Map from a vendor-class string to a tag. Most DHCP clients pro-
vide a "vendor class" which represents, in some sense, the type
of host. This option maps vendor classes to tags, so that DHCP
options may be selectively delivered to different classes of
hosts. For example --dhcp-vendorclass=set:printers,Hewlett-
Packard JetDirect will allow options to be set only for HP print-
ers like so: --dhcp-option=tag:printers,3,192.168.4.4 The vendor-
class string is substring matched against the vendor-class sup-
plied by the client, to allow fuzzy matching. The set: prefix is
optional but allowed for consistency.
Note that in IPv6 only, vendorclasses are namespaced with an
IANA-allocated enterprise number. This is given with enterprise:
keyword and specifies that only vendorclasses matching the speci-
fied number should be searched.
-j, --dhcp-userclass=set:<tag>,<user-class>
Map from a user-class string to a tag (with substring matching,
like vendor classes). Most DHCP clients provide a "user class"
which is configurable. This option maps user classes to tags, so
that DHCP options may be selectively delivered to different
classes of hosts. It is possible, for instance to use this to set
a different printer server for hosts in the class "accounts" than
for hosts in the class "engineering".
-4, --dhcp-mac=set:<tag>,<MAC address>
Map from a MAC address to a tag. The MAC address may include
wildcards. For example --dhcp-mac=set:3com,01:34:23:*:*:* will
set the tag "3com" for any host whose MAC address matches the
pattern.
--dhcp-circuitid=set:<tag>,<circuit-id>, --dhcp-remoteid=set:<tag>,<re-
mote-id>
Map from RFC3046 relay agent options to tags. This data may be
provided by DHCP relay agents. The circuit-id or remote-id is
normally given as colon-separated hex, but is also allowed to be
a simple string. If an exact match is achieved between the cir-
cuit or agent ID and one provided by a relay agent, the tag is
set.
--dhcp-remoteid (but not --dhcp-circuitid) is supported in IPv6.
--dhcp-subscrid=set:<tag>,<subscriber-id>
(IPv4 and IPv6) Map from RFC3993 subscriber-id relay agent op-
tions to tags.
--dhcp-proxy[=<ip addr>]......
(IPv4 only) A normal DHCP relay agent is only used to forward the
initial parts of a DHCP interaction to the DHCP server. Once a
client is configured, it communicates directly with the server.
This is undesirable if the relay agent is adding extra informa-
tion to the DHCP packets, such as that used by --dhcp-circuitid
and --dhcp-remoteid. A full relay implementation can use the RFC
5107 serverid-override option to force the DHCP server to use the
relay as a full proxy, with all packets passing through it. This
flag provides an alternative method of doing the same thing, for
relays which don't support RFC 5107. Given alone, it manipulates
the server-id for all interactions via relays. If a list of IP
addresses is given, only interactions via relays at those ad-
dresses are affected.
--dhcp-match=set:<tag>,<option number>|option:<option name>|vi-en-
cap:<enterprise>[,<value>]
Without <value>, set <tag> if the client sends a DHCP option of
the given number or name. With <value>, set <tag> only if the
client sends the option matching or containing <value>.
The value may be of the form "01:ff:*:02" in which case the value
must match (apart from wildcards) but the option sent may have
unmatched data past the end of the value. The value may also be
of the same form as in --dhcp-option in which case the option
sent is treated as an array, and one element must match. --dhcp-
match=set:efi-ia32,option:client-arch,6 sets the tag efi-ia32 if
the number 6 appears in the list of architectures sent by the
client in option 93. (See RFC 4578 for details.) If the value is
a string, substring matching is used.
The special form with vi-encap:<enterprise number> matches
against vendor-identifying vendor classes for the specified en-
terprise. Please see RFC 3925 for more details of these rare and
interesting beasts.
--dhcp-name-match=set:<tag>,<name>[*]
Set a <tag> if the given <name> is supplied by a DHCP client.
There may be a single trailing wildcard *, with a glob meaning.
Combined with dhcp-ignore or dhcp-ignore-names this gives the
ability to ignore certain clients by name, or disallow certain
hostnames from being claimed by a client.
--tag-if=set:<tag>[,set:<tag>[,tag:<tag>[,tag:<tag>]]]
Perform boolean operations on tags. All set:<tag> tags are set if
all tag:<tag> are already set, (or unset when tag:!<tag> is
used). If no tag:<tag> appears, set:<tag> tags are set uncondi-
tionally. Any number of set: and tag: forms may appear, in any
order. --tag-if lines are executed in order, so if the tag in
tag:<tag> is a tag set by another --tag-if, the line which sets
the tag must precede the line which tests it.
As an extension, the tag:<tag> clauses support limited wildcard
matching, similar to the matching in the --interface directive.
This allows the example --tag-if=set:ppp,tag:ppp* to set the tag
'ppp' for all requests received on any matching interface (ppp0,
ppp1, etc). This can be used in conjunction with the tag:!<tag>
format meaning that no tag matching the wildcard may be set.
-J, --dhcp-ignore=tag:<tag>[,tag:<tag>]
When all the given tags appear in the tag set, ignore the host
and do not allocate it a DHCP lease.
--dhcp-ignore-names[=tag:<tag>[,tag:<tag>]]
When all the given tags appear in the tag set, ignore any host-
name provided by the host. Note that, unlike --dhcp-ignore, it is
permissible to supply no tags, in which case DHCP-client supplied
hostnames are always ignored, and DHCP hosts are added to the DNS
using only --dhcp-host configuration in dnsmasq and the contents
of /etc/hosts and /etc/ethers.
--dhcp-generate-names=tag:<tag>[,tag:<tag>]
(IPv4 only) Generate a name for DHCP clients which do not other-
wise have one, using the MAC address expressed in hex, separated
by dashes. Note that if a host provides a name, it will be used
by preference to this, unless --dhcp-ignore-names is set.
--dhcp-broadcast[=tag:<tag>[,tag:<tag>]]
(IPv4 only) When all the given tags appear in the tag set, always
use broadcast to communicate with the host when it is unconfig-
ured. It is permissible to supply no tags, in which case this is
unconditional. Most DHCP clients which need broadcast replies set
a flag in their requests so that this happens automatically, some
old BOOTP clients do not.
-M, --dhcp-boot=[tag:<tag>,]<filename>,[<servername>[,<server ad-
dress>|<tftp_servername>]]
(IPv4 only) Set BOOTP options to be returned by the DHCP server.
Server name and address are optional: if not provided, the name
is left empty, and the address set to the address of the machine
running dnsmasq. If dnsmasq is providing a TFTP service (see
--enable-tftp ) then only the filename is required here to enable
network booting. If the optional tag(s) are given, they must
match for this configuration to be sent. Instead of an IP ad-
dress, the TFTP server address can be given as a domain name
which is looked up in /etc/hosts. This name can be associated in
/etc/hosts with multiple IP addresses, which are used round-
robin. This facility can be used to load balance the tftp load
among a set of servers.
--dhcp-sequential-ip
Dnsmasq is designed to choose IP addresses for DHCP clients using
a hash of the client's MAC address. This normally allows a
client's address to remain stable long-term, even if the client
sometimes allows its DHCP lease to expire. In this default mode
IP addresses are distributed pseudo-randomly over the entire
available address range. There are sometimes circumstances (typi-
cally server deployment) where it is more convenient to have IP
addresses allocated sequentially, starting from the lowest avail-
able address, and setting this flag enables this mode. Note that
in the sequential mode, clients which allow a lease to expire are
much more likely to move IP address; for this reason it should
not be generally used.
--dhcp-ignore-clid
Dnsmasq is reading 'client identifier' (RFC 2131) option sent by
clients (if available) to identify clients. This allow to serve
same IP address for a host using several interfaces. Use this op-
tion to disable 'client identifier' reading, i.e. to always iden-
tify a host using the MAC address.
--pxe-service=[tag:<tag>,]<CSA>,<menu text>[,<basename>|<bootservice-
type>][,<server address>|<server_name>]
Most uses of PXE boot-ROMS simply allow the PXE system to obtain
an IP address and then download the file specified by --dhcp-boot
and execute it. However the PXE system is capable of more complex
functions when supported by a suitable DHCP server.
This specifies a boot option which may appear in a PXE boot menu.
<CSA> is client system type, only services of the correct type
will appear in a menu. The known types are x86PC, PC98, IA64_EFI,
Alpha, Arc_x86, Intel_Lean_Client, IA32_EFI, x86-64_EFI, Xs-
cale_EFI, BC_EFI, ARM32_EFI and ARM64_EFI; an integer may be used
for other types. The parameter after the menu text may be a file
name, in which case dnsmasq acts as a boot server and directs the
PXE client to download the file by TFTP, either from itself (
--enable-tftp must be set for this to work) or another TFTP
server if the final server address/name is given. Note that the
"layer" suffix (normally ".0") is supplied by PXE, and need not
be added to the basename. Alternatively, the basename may be a
filename, complete with suffix, in which case no layer suffix is
added. If an integer boot service type, rather than a basename is
given, then the PXE client will search for a suitable boot ser-
vice for that type on the network. This search may be done by
broadcast, or direct to a server if its IP address/name is pro-
vided. If no boot service type or filename is provided (or a
boot service type of 0 is specified) then the menu entry will
abort the net boot procedure and continue booting from local me-
dia. The server address can be given as a domain name which is
looked up in /etc/hosts. This name can be associated in
/etc/hosts with multiple IP addresses, which are used round-
robin.
--pxe-prompt=[tag:<tag>,]<prompt>[,<timeout>]
Setting this provides a prompt to be displayed after PXE boot. If
the timeout is given then after the timeout has elapsed with no
keyboard input, the first available menu option will be automati-
cally executed. If the timeout is zero then the first available
menu item will be executed immediately. If --pxe-prompt is omit-
ted the system will wait for user input if there are multiple
items in the menu, but boot immediately if there is only one. See
--pxe-service for details of menu items.
Dnsmasq supports PXE "proxy-DHCP", in this case another DHCP
server on the network is responsible for allocating IP addresses,
and dnsmasq simply provides the information given in --pxe-prompt
and --pxe-service to allow netbooting. This mode is enabled using
the proxy keyword in --dhcp-range. If the "other" DHCP server is
on a remote network, it is possible, and useful, to configure
dnsmasq as both a PXE proxy-DHCP server and a DHCP relay to the
remote DHCP server. See --dhcp-relay for details. PXE is only
supported over IPv4 at this time.
--dhcp-pxe-vendor=<vendor>[,...]
According to UEFI and PXE specifications, DHCP packets between
PXE clients and proxy PXE servers should have PXEClient in their
vendor-class field. However, the firmware of computers from a few
vendors is customized to carry a different identifier in that
field. This option is used to consider such identifiers valid for
identifying PXE clients. For instance
--dhcp-pxe-vendor=PXEClient,HW-Client
will enable dnsmasq to also provide proxy PXE service to those
PXE clients with HW-Client in as their identifier.
-X, --dhcp-lease-max=<number>
Limits dnsmasq to the specified maximum number of DHCP leases.
The default is 1000. This limit is to prevent DoS attacks from
hosts which create thousands of leases and use lots of memory in
the dnsmasq process.
-K, --dhcp-authoritative
Should be set when dnsmasq is definitely the only DHCP server on
a network. For DHCPv4, it changes the behaviour from strict RFC
compliance so that DHCP requests on unknown leases from unknown
hosts are not ignored. This allows new hosts to get a lease with-
out a tedious timeout under all circumstances. It also allows
dnsmasq to rebuild its lease database without each client needing
to reacquire a lease, if the database is lost. For DHCPv6 it sets
the priority in replies to 255 (the maximum) instead of 0 (the
minimum).
--dhcp-rapid-commit
Enable DHCPv4 Rapid Commit Option specified in RFC 4039. When en-
abled, dnsmasq will respond to a DHCPDISCOVER message including a
Rapid Commit option with a DHCPACK including a Rapid Commit op-
tion and fully committed address and configuration information.
Should only be enabled if either the server is the only server
for the subnet, or multiple servers are present and they each
commit a binding for all clients.
--dhcp-alternate-port[=<server port>[,<client port>]]
(IPv4 only) Change the ports used for DHCP from the default. If
this option is given alone, without arguments, it changes the
ports used for DHCP from 67 and 68 to 1067 and 1068. If a single
argument is given, that port number is used for the server and
the port number plus one used for the client. Finally, two port
numbers allows arbitrary specification of both server and client
ports for DHCP.
-3, --bootp-dynamic[=<network-id>[,<network-id>]]
(IPv4 only) Enable dynamic allocation of IP addresses to BOOTP
clients. Use this with care, since each address allocated to a
BOOTP client is leased forever, and therefore becomes permanently
unavailable for re-use by other hosts. if this is given without
tags, then it unconditionally enables dynamic allocation. With
tags, only when the tags are all set. It may be repeated with
different tag sets.
-5, --no-ping
(IPv4 only) By default, the DHCP server will attempt to ensure
that an address is not in use before allocating it to a host. It
does this by sending an ICMP echo request (aka "ping") to the ad-
dress in question. If it gets a reply, then the address must al-
ready be in use, and another is tried. This flag disables this
check. Use with caution.
--log-dhcp
Extra logging for DHCP: log all the options sent to DHCP clients
and the tags used to determine them.
--quiet-dhcp, --quiet-dhcp6, --quiet-ra, --quiet-tftp
Suppress logging of the routine operation of these protocols. Er-
rors and problems will still be logged. --quiet-tftp does not
consider file not found to be an error. --quiet-dhcp and quiet-
dhcp6 are over-ridden by --log-dhcp.
-l, --dhcp-leasefile=<path>
Use the specified file to store DHCP lease information.
--dhcp-duid=<enterprise-id>,<uid>
(IPv6 only) Specify the server persistent UID which the DHCPv6
server will use. This option is not normally required as dnsmasq
creates a DUID automatically when it is first needed. When given,
this option provides dnsmasq the data required to create a DUID-
EN type DUID. Note that once set, the DUID is stored in the lease
database, so to change between DUID-EN and automatically created
DUIDs or vice-versa, the lease database must be re-initialised.
The enterprise-id is assigned by IANA, and the uid is a string of
hex octets unique to a particular device.
-6 --dhcp-script=<path>
Whenever a new DHCP lease is created, or an old one destroyed, or
a TFTP file transfer completes, the executable specified by this
option is run. <path> must be an absolute pathname, no PATH
search occurs. The arguments to the process are "add", "old" or
"del", the MAC address of the host (or DUID for IPv6) , the IP
address, and the hostname, if known. "add" means a lease has been
created, "del" means it has been destroyed, "old" is a notifica-
tion of an existing lease when dnsmasq starts or a change to MAC
address or hostname of an existing lease (also, lease length or
expiry and client-id, if --leasefile-ro is set and lease expiry
if --script-on-renewal is set). If the MAC address is from a
network type other than ethernet, it will have the network type
prepended, eg "06-01:23:45:67:89:ab" for token ring. The process
is run as root (assuming that dnsmasq was originally run as root)
even if dnsmasq is configured to change UID to an unprivileged
user.
The environment is inherited from the invoker of dnsmasq, with
some or all of the following variables added
For both IPv4 and IPv6:
DNSMASQ_DOMAIN if the fully-qualified domain name of the host is
known, this is set to the domain part. (Note that the hostname
passed to the script as an argument is never fully-qualified.)
If the client provides a hostname, DNSMASQ_SUPPLIED_HOSTNAME
If the client provides user-classes, DNSMASQ_USER_CLASS0..DNS-
MASQ_USER_CLASSn
If dnsmasq was compiled with HAVE_BROKEN_RTC, then the length of
the lease (in seconds) is stored in DNSMASQ_LEASE_LENGTH, other-
wise the time of lease expiry is stored in DNSMASQ_LEASE_EXPIRES.
The number of seconds until lease expiry is always stored in DNS-
MASQ_TIME_REMAINING.
DNSMASQ_DATA_MISSING is set to "1" during "old" events for exist-
ing leases generated at startup to indicate that data not stored
in the persistent lease database will not be present. This com-
prises everything other than IP address, hostname, MAC address,
DUID, IAID and lease length or expiry time.
If a lease used to have a hostname, which is removed, an "old"
event is generated with the new state of the lease, ie no name,
and the former name is provided in the environment variable DNS-
MASQ_OLD_HOSTNAME.
DNSMASQ_INTERFACE stores the name of the interface on which the
request arrived; this is not set for "old" actions when dnsmasq
restarts.
DNSMASQ_RELAY_ADDRESS is set if the client used a DHCP relay to
contact dnsmasq and the IP address of the relay is known.
DNSMASQ_TAGS contains all the tags set during the DHCP transac-
tion, separated by spaces.
DNSMASQ_LOG_DHCP is set if --log-dhcp is in effect.
DNSMASQ_REQUESTED_OPTIONS a string containing the decimal values
in the Parameter Request List option, comma separated, if the pa-
rameter request list option is provided by the client.
DNSMASQ_MUD_URL the Manufacturer Usage Description URL if pro-
vided by the client. (See RFC8520 for details.)
For IPv4 only:
DNSMASQ_CLIENT_ID if the host provided a client-id.
DNSMASQ_CIRCUIT_ID, DNSMASQ_SUBSCRIBER_ID, DNSMASQ_REMOTE_ID if a
DHCP relay-agent added any of these options.
If the client provides vendor-class, DNSMASQ_VENDOR_CLASS.
For IPv6 only:
If the client provides vendor-class, DNSMASQ_VENDOR_CLASS_ID,
containing the IANA enterprise id for the class, and DNSMASQ_VEN-
DOR_CLASS0..DNSMASQ_VENDOR_CLASSn for the data.
DNSMASQ_SERVER_DUID containing the DUID of the server: this is
the same for every call to the script.
DNSMASQ_IAID containing the IAID for the lease. If the lease is a
temporary allocation, this is prefixed to 'T'.
DNSMASQ_MAC containing the MAC address of the client, if known.
Note that the supplied hostname, vendorclass and userclass data
is only supplied for "add" actions or "old" actions when a host
resumes an existing lease, since these data are not held in dns-
masq's lease database.
All file descriptors are closed except stdin, which is open to
/dev/null, and stdout and stderr which capture output for logging
by dnsmasq. (In debug mode, stdio, stdout and stderr file are
left as those inherited from the invoker of dnsmasq).
The script is not invoked concurrently: at most one instance of
the script is ever running (dnsmasq waits for an instance of
script to exit before running the next). Changes to the lease
database are which require the script to be invoked are queued
awaiting exit of a running instance. If this queueing allows
multiple state changes occur to a single lease before the script
can be run then earlier states are discarded and the current
state of that lease is reflected when the script finally runs.
At dnsmasq startup, the script will be invoked for all existing
leases as they are read from the lease file. Expired leases will
be called with "del" and others with "old". When dnsmasq receives
a HUP signal, the script will be invoked for existing leases with
an "old" event.
There are five further actions which may appear as the first ar-
gument to the script, "init", "arp-add", "arp-del", "relay-snoop"
and "tftp". More may be added in the future, so scripts should
be written to ignore unknown actions. "init" is described below
in --leasefile-ro
The "tftp" action is invoked when a TFTP file transfer completes:
the arguments are the file size in bytes, the address to which
the file was sent, and the complete pathname of the file.
The "relay-snoop" action is invoked when dnsmasq is configured as
a DHCP relay for DHCPv6 and it relays a prefx delegation to a
client. The arguments are the name of the interface where the
client is conected, its (link-local) address on that interface
and the delegated prefix. This information is sufficient to in-
stall routes to the delegated prefix of a router. See --dhcp-re-
lay for more details on configuring DHCP relay.
The "arp-add" and "arp-del" actions are only called if enabled
with --script-arp They are are supplied with a MAC address and IP
address as arguments. "arp-add" indicates the arrival of a new
entry in the ARP or neighbour table, and "arp-del" indicates the
deletion of same.
--dhcp-luascript=<path>
Specify a script written in Lua, to be run when leases are cre-
ated, destroyed or changed. To use this option, dnsmasq must be
compiled with the correct support. The Lua interpreter is ini-
tialised once, when dnsmasq starts, so that global variables per-
sist between lease events. The Lua code must define a lease func-
tion, and may provide init and shutdown functions, which are
called, without arguments when dnsmasq starts up and terminates.
It may also provide a tftp function.
The lease function receives the information detailed in --dhcp-
script. It gets two arguments, firstly the action, which is a
string containing, "add", "old" or "del", and secondly a table of
tag value pairs. The tags mostly correspond to the environment
variables detailed above, for instance the tag "domain" holds the
same data as the environment variable DNSMASQ_DOMAIN. There are a
few extra tags which hold the data supplied as arguments to
--dhcp-script. These are mac_address, ip_address and hostname
for IPv4, and client_duid, ip_address and hostname for IPv6.
The tftp function is called in the same way as the lease func-
tion, and the table holds the tags destination_address, file_name
and file_size.
The arp and arp-old functions are called only when enabled with
--script-arp and have a table which holds the tags mac_address
and client_address.
--dhcp-scriptuser
Specify the user as which to run the lease-change script or Lua
script. This defaults to root, but can be changed to another user
using this flag.
--script-arp
Enable the "arp" and "arp-old" functions in the --dhcp-script and
--dhcp-luascript.
-9, --leasefile-ro
Completely suppress use of the lease database file. The file will
not be created, read, or written. Change the way the lease-change
script (if one is provided) is called, so that the lease database
may be maintained in external storage by the script. In addition
to the invocations given in --dhcp-script the lease-change
script is called once, at dnsmasq startup, with the single argu-
ment "init". When called like this the script should write the
saved state of the lease database, in dnsmasq leasefile format,
to stdout and exit with zero exit code. Setting this option also
forces the leasechange script to be called on changes to the
client-id and lease length and expiry time.
--script-on-renewal
Call the DHCP script when the lease expiry time changes, for in-
stance when the lease is renewed.
--bridge-interface=<interface>,<alias>[,<alias>]
Treat DHCP (v4 and v6) requests and IPv6 Router Solicit packets
arriving at any of the <alias> interfaces as if they had arrived
at <interface>. This option allows dnsmasq to provide DHCP and
RA service over unaddressed and unbridged Ethernet interfaces,
e.g. on an OpenStack compute host where each such interface is a
TAP interface to a VM, or as in "old style bridging" on BSD plat-
forms. A trailing '*' wildcard can be used in each <alias>.
It is permissible to add more than one alias using more than one
--bridge-interface option since --bridge-inter-
face=int1,alias1,alias2 is exactly equivalent to --bridge-inter-
face=int1,alias1 --bridge-interface=int1,alias2
--shared-network=<interface>,<addr>
--shared-network=<addr>,<addr>
The DHCP server determines which DHCP ranges are useable for al-
locating an address to a DHCP client based on the network from
which the DHCP request arrives, and the IP configuration of the
server's interface on that network. The shared-network option ex-
tends the available subnets (and therefore DHCP ranges) beyond
the subnets configured on the arrival interface.
The first argument is either the name of an interface, or an ad-
dress that is configured on a local interface, and the second ar-
gument is an address which defines another subnet on which ad-
dresses can be allocated.
To be useful, there must be a suitable dhcp-range which allows
address allocation on this subnet and this dhcp-range MUST in-
clude the netmask.
Using shared-network also needs extra consideration of routing.
Dnsmasq does not have the usual information that it uses to de-
termine the default route, so the default route option (or other
routing) MUST be configured manually. The client must have a
route to the server: if the two-address form of shared-network is
used, this needs to be to the first specified address. If the in-
terface,address form is used, there must be a route to all of the
addresses configured on the interface.
The two-address form of shared-network is also usable with a DHCP
relay: the first address is the address of the relay and the sec-
ond, as before, specifies an extra subnet which addresses may be
allocated from.
-s, --domain=<domain>[[,<address range>[,local]]|<interface>]
Specifies DNS domains for the DHCP server. Domains may be be
given unconditionally (without the IP range) or for limited IP
ranges. This has two effects; firstly it causes the DHCP server
to return the domain to any hosts which request it, and secondly
it sets the domain which it is legal for DHCP-configured hosts to
claim. The intention is to constrain hostnames so that an un-
trusted host on the LAN cannot advertise its name via DHCP as
e.g. "microsoft.com" and capture traffic not meant for it. If no
domain suffix is specified, then any DHCP hostname with a domain
part (ie with a period) will be disallowed and logged. If suffix
is specified, then hostnames with a domain part are allowed, pro-
vided the domain part matches the suffix. In addition, when a
suffix is set then hostnames without a domain part have the suf-
fix added as an optional domain part. Eg on my network I can set
--domain=thekelleys.org.uk and have a machine whose DHCP hostname
is "laptop". The IP address for that machine is available from
dnsmasq both as "laptop" and "laptop.thekelleys.org.uk". If the
domain is given as "#" then the domain is read from the first
"search" directive in /etc/resolv.conf (or equivalent).
The address range can be of the form <ip address>,<ip address> or
<ip address>/<netmask> or just a single <ip address>. See --dhcp-
fqdn which can change the behaviour of dnsmasq with domains.
If the address range is given as ip-address/network-size, then a
additional flag "local" may be supplied which has the effect of
adding --local declarations for forward and reverse DNS queries.
Eg. --domain=thekelleys.org.uk,192.168.0.0/24,local is identical
to --domain=thekelleys.org.uk,192.168.0.0/24 --local=/thekel-
leys.org.uk/ --local=/0.168.192.in-addr.arpa/
The address range can also be given as a network interface name,
in which case all of the subnets currently assigned to the inter-
face are used in matching the address. This allows hosts on dif-
ferent physical subnets to be given different domains in a way
which updates automatically as the interface addresses change.
--dhcp-fqdn
In the default mode, dnsmasq inserts the unqualified names of
DHCP clients into the DNS. For this reason, the names must be
unique, even if two clients which have the same name are in dif-
ferent domains. If a second DHCP client appears which has the
same name as an existing client, the name is transferred to the
new client. If --dhcp-fqdn is set, this behaviour changes: the
unqualified name is no longer put in the DNS, only the qualified
name. Two DHCP clients with the same name may both keep the name,
provided that the domain part is different (ie the fully quali-
fied names differ.) To ensure that all names have a domain part,
there must be at least --domain without an address specified when
--dhcp-fqdn is set.
--dhcp-client-update
Normally, when giving a DHCP lease, dnsmasq sets flags in the
FQDN option to tell the client not to attempt a DDNS update with
its name and IP address. This is because the name-IP pair is au-
tomatically added into dnsmasq's DNS view. This flag suppresses
that behaviour, this is useful, for instance, to allow Windows
clients to update Active Directory servers. See RFC 4702 for de-
tails.
--enable-ra
Enable dnsmasq's IPv6 Router Advertisement feature. DHCPv6
doesn't handle complete network configuration in the same way as
DHCPv4. Router discovery and (possibly) prefix discovery for au-
tonomous address creation are handled by a different protocol.
When DHCP is in use, only a subset of this is needed, and dnsmasq
can handle it, using existing DHCP configuration to provide most
data. When RA is enabled, dnsmasq will advertise a prefix for
each --dhcp-range, with default router as the relevant link-lo-
cal address on the machine running dnsmasq. By default, the "man-
aged address" bits are set, and the "use SLAAC" bit is reset.
This can be changed for individual subnets with the mode keywords
described in --dhcp-range. RFC6106 DNS parameters are included
in the advertisements. By default, the relevant link-local ad-
dress of the machine running dnsmasq is sent as recursive DNS
server. If provided, the DHCPv6 options dns-server and domain-
search are used for the DNS server (RDNSS) and the domain search
list (DNSSL).
--ra-param=<interface>,[mtu:<integer>|<interface>|off,][high,|low,]<ra-
interval>[,<router lifetime>]
Set non-default values for router advertisements sent via an in-
terface. The priority field for the router may be altered from
the default of medium with eg --ra-param=eth0,high. The interval
between router advertisements may be set (in seconds) with --ra-
param=eth0,60. The lifetime of the route may be changed or set
to zero, which allows a router to advertise prefixes but not a
route via itself. --ra-param=eth0,0,0 (A value of zero for the
interval means the default value.) All four parameters may be set
at once. --ra-param=eth0,mtu:1280,low,60,1200
The interface field may include a wildcard.
The mtu: parameter may be an arbitrary interface name, in which
case the MTU value for that interface is used. This is useful for
(eg) advertising the MTU of a WAN interface on the other inter-
faces of a router.
--dhcp-reply-delay=[tag:<tag>,]<integer>
Delays sending DHCPOFFER and PROXYDHCP replies for at least the
specified number of seconds. This can be used as workaround for
bugs in PXE boot firmware that does not function properly when
receiving an instant reply. This option takes into account the
time already spent waiting (e.g. performing ping check) if any.
--enable-tftp[=<interface>[,<interface>]]
Enable the TFTP server function. This is deliberately limited to
that needed to net-boot a client. Only reading is allowed; the
tsize and blksize extensions are supported (tsize is only sup-
ported in octet mode). Without an argument, the TFTP service is
provided to the same set of interfaces as DHCP service. If the
list of interfaces is provided, that defines which interfaces re-
ceive TFTP service.
--tftp-root=<directory>[,<interface>]
Look for files to transfer using TFTP relative to the given di-
rectory. When this is set, TFTP paths which include ".." are re-
jected, to stop clients getting outside the specified root. Ab-
solute paths (starting with /) are allowed, but they must be
within the tftp-root. If the optional interface argument is
given, the directory is only used for TFTP requests via that in-
terface.
--tftp-no-fail
Do not abort startup if specified tftp root directories are inac-
cessible.
--tftp-unique-root[=ip|mac]
Add the IP or hardware address of the TFTP client as a path com-
ponent on the end of the TFTP-root. Only valid if a --tftp-root
is set and the directory exists. Defaults to adding IP address
(in standard dotted-quad format). For instance, if --tftp-root
is "/tftp" and client 1.2.3.4 requests file "myfile" then the ef-
fective path will be "/tftp/1.2.3.4/myfile" if /tftp/1.2.3.4 ex-
ists or /tftp/myfile otherwise. When "=mac" is specified it will
append the MAC address instead, using lowercase zero padded dig-
its separated by dashes, e.g.: 01-02-03-04-aa-bb Note that re-
solving MAC addresses is only possible if the client is in the
local network or obtained a DHCP lease from us.
--tftp-secure
Enable TFTP secure mode: without this, any file which is readable
by the dnsmasq process under normal unix access-control rules is
available via TFTP. When the --tftp-secure flag is given, only
files owned by the user running the dnsmasq process are accessi-
ble. If dnsmasq is being run as root, different rules apply:
--tftp-secure has no effect, but only files which have the world-
readable bit set are accessible. It is not recommended to run
dnsmasq as root with TFTP enabled, and certainly not without
specifying --tftp-root. Doing so can expose any world-readable
file on the server to any host on the net.
--tftp-lowercase
Convert filenames in TFTP requests to all lowercase. This is use-
ful for requests from Windows machines, which have case-insensi-
tive filesystems and tend to play fast-and-loose with case in
filenames. Note that dnsmasq's tftp server always converts "\"
to "/" in filenames.
--tftp-max=<connections>
Set the maximum number of concurrent TFTP connections allowed.
This defaults to 50. When serving a large number of TFTP connec-
tions, per-process file descriptor limits may be encountered.
Dnsmasq needs one file descriptor for each concurrent TFTP con-
nection and one file descriptor per unique file (plus a few oth-
ers). So serving the same file simultaneously to n clients will
use require about n + 10 file descriptors, serving different
files simultaneously to n clients will require about (2*n) + 10
descriptors. If --tftp-port-range is given, that can affect the
number of concurrent connections.
--tftp-mtu=<mtu size>
Use size as the ceiling of the MTU supported by the intervening
network when negotiating TFTP blocksize, overriding the MTU set-
ting of the local interface if it is larger.
--tftp-no-blocksize
Stop the TFTP server from negotiating the "blocksize" option with
a client. Some buggy clients request this option but then behave
badly when it is granted.
--tftp-port-range=<start>,<end>
A TFTP server listens on a well-known port (69) for connection
initiation, but it also uses a dynamically-allocated port for
each connection. Normally these are allocated by the OS, but this
option specifies a range of ports for use by TFTP transfers. This
can be useful when TFTP has to traverse a firewall. The start of
the range cannot be lower than 1025 unless dnsmasq is running as
root. The number of concurrent TFTP connections is limited by the
size of the port range.
--tftp-single-port
Run in a mode where the TFTP server uses ONLY the well-known port
(69) for its end of the TFTP transfer. This allows TFTP to work
when there in NAT is the path between client and server. Note
that this is not strictly compliant with the RFCs specifying the
TFTP protocol: use at your own risk.
-C, --conf-file=<file>
Specify a configuration file. The presence of this option stops
dnsmasq from reading the default configuration file (normally
/etc/dnsmasq.conf). Multiple files may be specified by repeating
the option either on the command line or in configuration files.
A filename of "-" causes dnsmasq to read configuration from
stdin.
-7, --conf-dir=<directory>[,<file-extension>......],
Read all the files in the given directory as configuration files.
If extension(s) are given, any files which end in those exten-
sions are skipped. Any files whose names end in ~ or start with .
or start and end with # are always skipped. If the extension
starts with * then only files which have that extension are
loaded. So --conf-dir=/path/to/dir,*.conf loads all files with
the suffix .conf in /path/to/dir. This flag may be given on the
command line or in a configuration file. If giving it on the com-
mand line, be sure to escape * characters. Files are loaded in
alphabetical order of filename.
--servers-file=<file>
A special case of --conf-file which differs in two respects.
Firstly, only --server and --rev-server are allowed in the con-
figuration file included. Secondly, the file is re-read and the
configuration therein is updated when dnsmasq receives SIGHUP.
--conf-script=<file>[ <arg]
Execute <file>, and treat what it emits to stdout as the contents
of a configuration file. If the script exits with a non-zero
exit code, dnsmasq treats this as a fatal error. The script can
be passed arguments, space seperated from the filename and each
other so, for instance --conf-dir="/etc/dnsmasq-uncompress-ads
/share/ads-domains.gz"
with /etc/dnsmasq-uncompress-ads containing
set -e
zcat ${1} | sed -e "s:^:address=/:" -e "s:$:/:"
exit 0
and /share/ads-domains.gz containing a compressed list of ad
server domains will save disk space with large ad-server block-
lists.
--no-ident
Do not respond to class CHAOS and type TXT in domain bind
queries.
Without this option being set, the cache statistics are also
available in the DNS as answers to queries of class CHAOS and
type TXT in domain bind. The domain names are cachesize.bind, in-
sertions.bind, evictions.bind, misses.bind, hits.bind, auth.bind
and servers.bind unless disabled at compile-time. An example com-
mand to query this, using the dig utility would be
dig +short chaos txt cachesize.bind
--max-tcp-connections=<number>
The maximum number of concurrent TCP connections. The application
forks to handle each TCP request. The default maximum is 20.
CONFIG FILE
At startup, dnsmasq reads /etc/dnsmasq.conf, if it exists. (On FreeBSD,
the file is /usr/local/etc/dnsmasq.conf ) (but see the --conf-file and
--conf-dir options.) The format of this file consists of one option per
line, exactly as the long options detailed in the OPTIONS section but
without the leading "--". Lines starting with # are comments and ig-
nored. For options which may only be specified once, the configuration
file overrides the command line. Quoting is allowed in a config file:
between " quotes the special meanings of ,:. and # are removed and the
following escapes are allowed: \\ \" \t \e \b \r and \n. The later cor-
responding to tab, escape, backspace, return and newline.
NOTES
When it receives a SIGHUP, dnsmasq clears its cache and then re-loads
/etc/hosts and /etc/ethers and any file given by --dhcp-hostsfile,
--dhcp-hostsdir, --dhcp-optsfile, --dhcp-optsdir, --addn-hosts or
--hostsdir. The DHCP lease change script is called for all existing
DHCP leases. If --no-poll is set SIGHUP also re-reads /etc/resolv.conf.
SIGHUP does NOT re-read the configuration file.
When it receives a SIGUSR1, dnsmasq writes statistics to the system log.
It writes the cache size, the number of names which have had to removed
from the cache before they expired in order to make room for new names
and the total number of names that have been inserted into the cache.
The number of cache hits and misses and the number of authoritative
queries answered are also given. For each upstream server it gives the
number of queries sent, and the number which resulted in an error. It
also gives information on the number of forks for TCP connections. In
--no-daemon mode or when full logging is enabled (--log-queries), a com-
plete dump of the contents of the cache is made.
When it receives SIGUSR2 and it is logging direct to a file (see --log-
facility ) dnsmasq will close and reopen the log file. Note that during
this operation, dnsmasq will not be running as root. When it first cre-
ates the logfile dnsmasq changes the ownership of the file to the non-
root user it will run as. Logrotate should be configured to create a new
log file with the ownership which matches the existing one before send-
ing SIGUSR2. If TCP DNS queries are in progress, the old logfile will
remain open in child processes which are handling TCP queries and may
continue to be written. There is a limit of 150 seconds, after which all
existing TCP processes will have expired: for this reason, it is not
wise to configure logfile compression for logfiles which have just been
rotated. Using logrotate, the required options are create and delay-
compress.
Dnsmasq is a DNS query forwarder: it is not capable of recursively an-
swering arbitrary queries starting from the root servers but forwards
such queries to a fully recursive upstream DNS server which is typically
provided by an ISP. By default, dnsmasq reads /etc/resolv.conf to dis-
cover the IP addresses of the upstream nameservers it should use, since
the information is typically stored there. Unless --no-poll is used,
dnsmasq checks the modification time of /etc/resolv.conf (or equivalent
if --resolv-file is used) and re-reads it if it changes. This allows the
DNS servers to be set dynamically by PPP or DHCP since both protocols
provide the information. Absence of /etc/resolv.conf is not an error
since it may not have been created before a PPP connection exists. Dns-
masq simply keeps checking in case /etc/resolv.conf is created at any
time. Dnsmasq can be told to parse more than one resolv.conf file. This
is useful on a laptop, where both PPP and DHCP may be used: dnsmasq can
be set to poll both /etc/ppp/resolv.conf and /etc/dhcpc/resolv.conf and
will use the contents of whichever changed last, giving automatic
switching between DNS servers.
Upstream servers may also be specified on the command line or in the
configuration file. These server specifications optionally take a domain
name which tells dnsmasq to use that server only to find names in that
particular domain.
In order to configure dnsmasq to act as cache for the host on which it
is running, put "nameserver 127.0.0.1" in /etc/resolv.conf to force lo-
cal processes to send queries to dnsmasq. Then either specify the up-
stream servers directly to dnsmasq using --server options or put their
addresses real in another file, say /etc/resolv.dnsmasq and run dnsmasq
with the --resolv-file /etc/resolv.dnsmasq option. This second technique
allows for dynamic update of the server addresses by PPP or DHCP.
Addresses in /etc/hosts will "shadow" different addresses for the same
names in the upstream DNS, so "mycompany.com 1.2.3.4" in /etc/hosts will
ensure that queries for "mycompany.com" always return 1.2.3.4 even if
queries in the upstream DNS would otherwise return a different address.
There is one exception to this: if the upstream DNS contains a CNAME
which points to a shadowed name, then looking up the CNAME through dns-
masq will result in the unshadowed address associated with the target of
the CNAME. To work around this, add the CNAME to /etc/hosts so that the
CNAME is shadowed too.
The tag system works as follows: dnsmasq tags each DHCP request with
tags from applicable configuration lines containing set:<tag> i.e.
set:<tag> from the --dhcp-range used to allocate the address;
set:<tag> from any matching --dhcp-host (plus the tag known or known-
othernet).
BOOTP requests are tagged bootp. Each request is also tagged with the
name of the interface on which the request arrived.
Each configuration line containing one or more tag:<tag> constructs ap-
plies when all its tags exist on the request. That is:
Configuration tag:A applies to a request set:tagged A.
Configuration tag:B applies to a request set:tagged B.
Configuration tag:A+B doesn't apply to a request set:tagged A.
Configuration tag:A+B doesn't apply to a request set:tagged B.
Configurations tag:A+B, tag:A, tag:B apply to a request set:tagged A+B.
set:<tag> constructs in --dhcp-range and --dhcp-host tag requests.
Use tag:<tag>s in --dhcp-options to match set:<tag> and apply configura-
tions.
A --dhcp-option with tag:<tag> is preferred over an untagged --dhcp-op-
tion, provided that all its tags match somewhere in the set gathered
above.
The tag prefix '!' means 'not'. --dhcp-option=tag:!purple,3,1.2.3.4
sends the option when the request is not tagged with purple. (The shell
metacharacter '!' must be escaped on the command line but not in a con-
figuration file).
When selecting --dhcp-options, a --dhcp-range tag is second class to
other tags, to make it easy to override options for individual hosts,
so:
--dhcp-range=set:interface1,......
--dhcp-host=set:myhost,.....
--dhcp-option=tag:interface1,option:nis-domain,"domain1"
--dhcp-option=tag:myhost,option:nis-domain,"domain2"
sets the NIS-domain to domain1 for hosts in the range, but to domain2
for a particular host that may or may not fall in the range.
Note that for --dhcp-range both tag:<tag> and set:<tag> are possible, in
order to both select the range in use based on (eg) --dhcp-host, and to
affect the options sent, based on the range selected.
The tag system evolved from an earlier, more limited system. For back-
ward compatibility, "net:" may be used instead of "tag:" and "set:" may
be omitted. (Except in --dhcp-host, where "net:" may be used instead of
"set:".) For the same reason, '#' may be used instead of '!' to indicate
NOT.
The DHCP server in dnsmasq will function as a BOOTP server also, pro-
vided that the MAC address and IP address for clients are given, either
using --dhcp-host configurations or in /etc/ethers , and a --dhcp-range
configuration option is present to activate the DHCP server on a partic-
ular network. (Setting --bootp-dynamic removes the need for static ad-
dress mappings.) The filename parameter in a BOOTP request is used as a
tag, as is the tag bootp, allowing some control over the options re-
turned to different classes of hosts.
AUTHORITATIVE CONFIGURATION
Configuring dnsmasq to act as an authoritative DNS server is complicated
by the fact that it involves configuration of external DNS servers to
provide delegation. We will walk through three scenarios of increasing
complexity. Prerequisites for all of these scenarios are a globally ac-
cessible IP address, an A or AAAA record pointing to that address, and
an external DNS server capable of doing delegation of the zone in ques-
tion. For the first part of this explanation, we will call the A (or
AAAA) record for the globally accessible address server.example.com, and
the zone for which dnsmasq is authoritative our.zone.com.
The simplest configuration consists of two lines of dnsmasq configura-
tion; something like
--auth-server=server.example.com,eth0
--auth-zone=our.zone.com,1.2.3.0/24
and two records in the external DNS
server.example.com A 192.0.43.10
our.zone.com NS server.example.com
eth0 is the external network interface on which dnsmasq is listening,
and has (globally accessible) address 192.0.43.10.
Note that the external IP address may well be dynamic (ie assigned from
an ISP by DHCP or PPP) If so, the A record must be linked to this dy-
namic assignment by one of the usual dynamic-DNS systems.
A more complex, but practically useful configuration has the address
record for the globally accessible IP address residing in the authorita-
tive zone which dnsmasq is serving, typically at the root. Now we have
--auth-server=our.zone.com,eth0
--auth-zone=our.zone.com,1.2.3.0/24
our.zone.com A 1.2.3.4
our.zone.com NS our.zone.com
The A record for our.zone.com has now become a glue record, it solves
the chicken-and-egg problem of finding the IP address of the nameserver
for our.zone.com when the A record is within that zone. Note that this
is the only role of this record: as dnsmasq is now authoritative from
our.zone.com it too must provide this record. If the external address is
static, this can be done with an /etc/hosts entry or --host-record.
--auth-server=our.zone.com,eth0
--host-record=our.zone.com,1.2.3.4
--auth-zone=our.zone.com,1.2.3.0/24
If the external address is dynamic, the address associated with
our.zone.com must be derived from the address of the relevant interface.
This is done using --interface-name Something like:
--auth-server=our.zone.com,eth0
--interface-name=our.zone.com,eth0
--auth-zone=our.zone.com,1.2.3.0/24,eth0
(The "eth0" argument in --auth-zone adds the subnet containing eth0's
dynamic address to the zone, so that the --interface-name returns the
address in outside queries.)
Our final configuration builds on that above, but also adds a secondary
DNS server. This is another DNS server which learns the DNS data for the
zone by doing zones transfer, and acts as a backup should the primary
server become inaccessible. The configuration of the secondary is beyond
the scope of this man-page, but the extra configuration of dnsmasq is
simple:
--auth-sec-servers=secondary.myisp.com
and
our.zone.com NS secondary.myisp.com
Adding auth-sec-servers enables zone transfer in dnsmasq, to allow the
secondary to collect the DNS data. If you wish to restrict this data to
particular hosts then
--auth-peer=<IP address of secondary>
will do so.
Dnsmasq acts as an authoritative server for in-addr.arpa and ip6.arpa
domains associated with the subnets given in --auth-zone declarations,
so reverse (address to name) lookups can be simply configured with a
suitable NS record, for instance in this example, where we allow
1.2.3.0/24 addresses.
3.2.1.in-addr.arpa NS our.zone.com
Note that at present, reverse (in-addr.arpa and ip6.arpa) zones are not
available in zone transfers, so there is no point arranging secondary
servers for reverse lookups.
When dnsmasq is configured to act as an authoritative server, the fol-
lowing data is used to populate the authoritative zone.
--mx-host, --srv-host, --dns-rr, --txt-record, --naptr-record, --caa-
record, as long as the record names are in the authoritative domain.
--synth-domain as long as the domain is in the authoritative zone and,
for reverse (PTR) queries, the address is in the relevant subnet.
--cname as long as the record name is in the authoritative domain. If
the target of the CNAME is unqualified, then it is qualified with the
authoritative zone name. CNAME used in this way (only) may be wildcards,
as in
--cname=*.example.com,default.example.com
IPv4 and IPv6 addresses from /etc/hosts (and --addn-hosts ) and --host-
record and --interface-name and ---dynamic-host provided the address
falls into one of the subnets specified in the --auth-zone.
Addresses of DHCP leases, provided the address falls into one of the
subnets specified in the --auth-zone. (If constructed DHCP ranges are
is use, which depend on the address dynamically assigned to an inter-
face, then the form of --auth-zone which defines subnets by the dynamic
address of an interface should be used to ensure this condition is met.)
In the default mode, where a DHCP lease has an unqualified name, and
possibly a qualified name constructed using --domain then the name in
the authoritative zone is constructed from the unqualified name and the
zone's domain. This may or may not equal that specified by --domain. If
--dhcp-fqdn is set, then the fully qualified names associated with DHCP
leases are used, and must match the zone's domain.
EXIT CODES
0 - Dnsmasq successfully forked into the background, or terminated nor-
mally if backgrounding is not enabled.
1 - A problem with configuration was detected.
2 - A problem with network access occurred (address in use, attempt to
use privileged ports without permission).
3 - A problem occurred with a filesystem operation (missing file/direc-
tory, permissions).
4 - Memory allocation failure.
5 - Other miscellaneous problem.
11 or greater - a non zero return code was received from the lease-
script process "init" call or a --conf-script file. The exit code from
dnsmasq is the script's exit code with 10 added.
LIMITS
The default values for resource limits in dnsmasq are generally conserv-
ative, and appropriate for embedded router type devices with slow
processors and limited memory. On more capable hardware, it is possible
to increase the limits, and handle many more clients. The following ap-
plies to dnsmasq-2.37: earlier versions did not scale as well.
Dnsmasq is capable of handling DNS and DHCP for at least a thousand
clients. The DHCP lease times should not be very short (less than one
hour). The value of --dns-forward-max can be increased: start with it
equal to the number of clients and increase if DNS seems slow. Note that
DNS performance depends too on the performance of the upstream name-
servers. The size of the DNS cache may be increased: the hard limit is
10000 names and the default (150) is very low. Sending SIGUSR1 to dns-
masq makes it log information which is useful for tuning the cache size.
See the NOTES section for details.
The built-in TFTP server is capable of many simultaneous file transfers:
the absolute limit is related to the number of file-handles allowed to a
process and the ability of the select() system call to cope with large
numbers of file handles. If the limit is set too high using --tftp-max
it will be scaled down and the actual limit logged at start-up. Note
that more transfers are possible when the same file is being sent than
when each transfer sends a different file.
It is possible to use dnsmasq to block Web advertising by using a list
of known banner-ad servers, all resolving to 127.0.0.1 or 0.0.0.0, in
/etc/hosts or an additional hosts file. The list can be very long, dns-
masq has been tested successfully with one million names. That size file
needs a 1GHz processor and about 60Mb of RAM.
INTERNATIONALISATION
Dnsmasq can be compiled to support internationalisation. To do this, the
make targets "all-i18n" and "install-i18n" should be used instead of the
standard targets "all" and "install". When internationalisation is com-
piled in, dnsmasq will produce log messages in the local language and
support internationalised domain names (IDN). Domain names in
/etc/hosts, /etc/ethers and /etc/dnsmasq.conf which contain non-ASCII
characters will be translated to the DNS-internal punycode representa-
tion. Note that dnsmasq determines both the language for messages and
the assumed charset for configuration files from the LANG environment
variable. This should be set to the system default value by the script
which is responsible for starting dnsmasq. When editing the configura-
tion files, be careful to do so using only the system-default locale and
not user-specific one, since dnsmasq has no direct way of determining
the charset in use, and must assume that it is the system default.
FILES
/etc/dnsmasq.conf
/usr/local/etc/dnsmasq.conf
/etc/resolv.conf /var/run/dnsmasq/resolv.conf /etc/ppp/resolv.conf
/etc/dhcpc/resolv.conf
/etc/hosts
/etc/ethers
/var/lib/misc/dnsmasq.leases
/var/db/dnsmasq.leases
/var/run/dnsmasq.pid
SEE ALSO
hosts(5), resolver(5)
AUTHOR
This manual page was written by Simon Kelley <simon@thekelleys.org.uk>.
2025-02-05 DNSMASQ(8)
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