Connect to a local knot

Knot is an authoritative DNS server developed by the cz.nic association.

It is possible to use it with happyDomain through Dynamic DNS (RFC 2136).

Configure Knot to enable Dynamic DNS

First, you have to edit the main knot configuration file (usually /etc/knot/knot.conf) to add a secret that will be shared between happyDomain and knot to authenticate the changes. Then you have to indicate which domains will be managed by happyDomain.

Adding a shared secret

Under the main key section of your configuration, add the following key:

key:
  [...]
  - id: happydomain
    algorithm: hmac-sha512
    secret: "<SOME_SECRET>"

Obviously replace <SOME_SECRET> with a string as obtained with openssl rand -base64 48.

Creating an authorization rule for happyDomain

In addition to the key, you must specify in the configuration how the key can be used.

To do this, under the main acl section, we add:

acl:
  [...]
  - id: acl_happydomain
    key: happydomain
    action: transfer
    action: update

This associates the key defined just before with the actions transfer and update, respectively to allow retrieving the zone and to update records.

Associate the authorization to each zone

Now that you have created a rule allowing the happydomain key to make changes, you need to indicate to which zones this rule applies.

For each zone, you must add an acl element referencing the acl_happydomain rule:

For example, for an existing happydomain.org zone, we will add the acl line as follows:

zone:
  [...]
  - domain: happydomain.org
    acl:
      - acl_happydomain
    [...]

The acl element is a list, so you may already have other acl elements in this list. In this case you just need to add the acl_happydomain element to the already existing list.

You have to add this acl element for each zone, unless you use the following trick.

Associate the authorization to all zones

If you manage many zones, it may be more convenient to set the default authorization for all zones. In this case, instead of the previous section, we will modify the default template:

template:
  - id: default
    acl:
      - acl_happydomain
  [...]

The default template is applied to all zones by default. By doing so, all zones will inherit the acl_happydomain rule.

Apply the configuration

Now that the configuration file has been modified, tell knotd to reload its configuration:

knotc reload

Once knot well configured, you can link it to happyDomain using the Dynamic DNS connector :

The Dynamic DNS connector on the host selection page

Then fill in the form with the address where your knot server is accessible, then fill in the different Key fields with the information from the knot's key section:

  • Key Name : corresponds to id in knot’s configuration ;
  • Key Algorithm : corresponds to algorithm ;
  • Secret Key : corresponds to secret.

Once the provider is added, it does not allow you to list existing domains, but you can still manually add all your domains.