This is a docker compose application providing the basic stack for deSEC name services. It consists of
nslord
: Eventually authoritative DNS server (PowerDNS). DNSSEC keying material is generated here.nsmaster
: Stealth authoritative DNS server (PowerDNS). Receives fully signed AXFR zone transfers from nslord
. No access to keys.api
: RESTful API to create deSEC users and domains, see documentation.dbapi
, dblord
, dbmaster
: Postgres databases for api
and nsmaster
, MariaDB database for nslord
, respectively.www
: nginx instance serving static website content and proxying to api
celery
: A shadow instance of the api
code for performing asynchronous tasks (email delivery).rabbitmq
: celery
's queuememcached
: api
-wide in-memory cache, currently used to keep API throttling stateopenvpn-server
: OpenVPN server used to tunnel replication traffic between this stack and frontend DNS secondariesprometheus
: Prometheus server for monitoringAlthough most configuration is contained in this repository, some external dependencies need to be met before the application can be run. Dependencies are:
We run this software with the --userland-proxy=false
flag of the dockerd
daemon, and recommend you do the same.
Also, configure certificates for openvpn-server
:
ca.crt
, server.crt
, and server.key
to openvpn-server/secrets/
.openvpn --genkey --secret ta.key
inside openvpn-server/secrets/
.For provisioning a secondary, use the same easy-rsa
PKI and create a new client.key
and client.crt
pair. Transfer these securely onto the secondary, along with ca.crt
and ta.key
.
(You can also create the key on the secondary and only transfer a certificate signing request and the certificate.)
Set sensitive information and network topology using environment variables or an .env
file. You need (you can use the .env.default
file as a template):
DESECSTACK_DOMAIN
: domain name under which the entire system will be running. The API will be reachable at https://desec.$DESECSTACK_DOMAIN/api/. For development setup, we recommend using yourname.dedyn.io
DESECSTACK_NS
: the names of the authoritative name servers, i.e. names pointing to your secondary name servers. Minimum 2.DESECSTACK_IPV4_REAR_PREFIX16
: IPv4 net, size /16, for assignment of internal container IPv4 addresses. NOTE: If you change this in an existing setup, you
need to manually update persisted data structures such as the MySQL grant tables! Better don't do it.DESECSTACK_IPV6_SUBNET
: IPv6 net, ideally /80 (see below)DESECSTACK_IPV6_ADDRESS
: IPv6 address of frontend container, ideally 0642:ac10:0080 in within the above subnet (see below)DESECSTACK_PORT_XFR
: Port over which XFRs are performed with secondariesDESECSTACK_WWW_CERTS
: ./path/to/certificates
for www
container. This directory is monitored for changes so that nginx can reload when new keys/certificates are provided. Note: The reload is done any time something changes in the directory. The relevant files are not watched individually.DESECSTACK_API_ADMIN
: white-space separated list of Django admin email addressesDESECSTACK_API_AUTHACTION_VALIDITY
: number of hours for which authenticated action links (e.g. email verification) should be considered valid (default: 0)DESECSTACK_API_DEBUG
: Django debug setting. Must be True (default in docker-compose.dev.yml
) or False (default otherwise)DESECSTACK_API_SEPA_CREDITOR_ID
: SEPA creditor ID for donationsDESECSTACK_API_EMAIL_HOST
: when sending email, use this mail serverDESECSTACK_API_EMAIL_HOST_USER
: username for sending emailDESECSTACK_API_EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD
: password for sending emailDESECSTACK_API_EMAIL_PORT
: port for sending emailDESECSTACK_API_SECRETKEY
: Django secretDESECSTACK_API_PSL_RESOLVER
: Resolver IP address to use for PSL lookups. If empty, the system's default resolver is used.DESECSTACK_DBAPI_PASSWORD_desec
: database password for desecapiDESECSTACK_MINIMUM_TTL_DEFAULT
: minimum TTL users can set for RRsets. The setting is per domain, and the default defined here is used on domain creation.DESECSTACK_DBLORD_PASSWORD_pdns
: mysql password for pdns on nslordDESECSTACK_NSLORD_APIKEY
: pdns API key on nslordDESECSTACK_NSLORD_CARBONSERVER
: pdns carbon-server
setting on nslord (optional)DESECSTACK_NSLORD_CARBONOURNAME
: pdns carbon-ourname
setting on nslord (optional)DESECSTACK_NSLORD_DEFAULT_TTL
: TTL to use by default, including for default NS recordsDESECSTACK_DBMASTER_PASSWORD_pdns
: mysql password for pdns on nsmasterDESECSTACK_NSMASTER_ALSO_NOTIFY
: Comma-separated list of additional IP addresses to notify of zone updatesDESECSTACK_NSMASTER_APIKEY
: pdns API key on nsmaster (required so that we can execute zone deletions on nsmaster, which replicates to the secondaries)DESECSTACK_NSMASTER_CARBONSERVER
: pdns carbon-server
setting on nsmaster (optional)DESECSTACK_NSMASTER_CARBONOURNAME
: pdns carbon-ourname
setting on nsmaster (optional)DESECSTACK_NSMASTER_TSIGKEY
: Base64-encoded value of the default TSIG key used for talking to external secondaries (algorithm: HMAC-SHA256)DESECSTACK_WATCHDOG_SECONDARIES
: space-separated list of secondary hostnames; used to check correct replication of recent DNS changesDESECSTACK_PROMETHEUS_PASSWORD
: basic auth password for user prometheus
at https://${DESECSTACK_DOMAIN}/prometheus/
Development:
$ ./dev
Production:
$ docker compose build && docker compose up
All important data is stored in the databases managed by the db*
containers. They use Docker volumes which, by default, reside in /var/lib/docker/volumes/desec-stack_{dbapi_postgres,dblord_mysql,dbmaster_postgres}
.
This is the location you will want to back up. (Be sure to follow standard MySQL/Postgres backup practices, i.e. make sure things are consistent.)
deSEC currently maintains the following API versions:
API Version | URL Prefix | Status | Support Ends |
---|---|---|---|
Version 1 | /api/v1/ |
stable | earliest 6 months after v2 is declared stable |
Version 2 | /api/v2/ |
unstable |
You can find our documentation for all API versions at https://desec.readthedocs.io/. (Select the version of interest in the navigation bar.)
This stack is IPv6-capable. Caveats:
It is not necessary to start the Docker daemon with --ipv6
or --fixed-cidr-v6
. However, it is recommended to run dockerd
with --userland-proxy=false
to avoid
exposing ports on the host IPv6 address through docker-proxy
.
Topology: Assuming 2a01:4f8:a0:12eb::/64 is the host network, and we reserve 2a01:4f8:a0:12eb:deec::/80 for the deSEC stack. Docker has more or less established that
IPv6 addresses be composed of the /80 prefix and the container MAC address. We choose the private 06:42:ac MAC prefix, defining a /104 subnet. For the remaining 24
bits of the MAC and IPv6 address, the convention seems to be to use the last 24 bits from the internally assigned IPv4 address. However, the first 8 of these are
configurable through the DESECSTACK_IPV4_REAR_PREFIX16
variable. Since we don't want public IPv6 addresses to change if the internal IPv4 net prefix changes, we use
0x10
for bits at position 24--17. We thus arrive at the subnet 2a01:4f8:a0:12eb:deec:642:ac10:0/108 for our public IPv6-enabled Docker containers. The last 16 bits
of the IPv6 address we indeed take from the internally assigned IP address. The same procedure is used to set the MAC address of IPv6 containers (they begin with
06:42:ac:10:
).
All other traffic in the /80 subnet is unexpected and therefore rejected. This includes traffic for IPv6 addresses that Docker assigns. (If Docker uses the MAC address for this purpose, the prefix is 02:42:ac which is not part of our public network, so we're safe.)
Since the above topology is strictly determined by the /80 prefix and the MAC address, we hope that most of the hardcoding can be removed in the future.
Docker currently exposes IPv6-capable containers fully, without restriction. Therefore, it is necessary to set up a firewall, like (ip6tables
)
-A FORWARD -m state --state RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT
-A FORWARD -d 2a01:4f8:a0:12eb:deec:642:ac10:0/108 -i eth0 -j ACCEPT
-A FORWARD -d 2a01:4f8:a0:12eb:deec::/80 -i eth0 -j REJECT --reject-with icmp6-port-unreachable
As desec-stack utilizes a number of different technologies and software packages, it requires some effort to setup a stack ready for development. While there are certainly many ways to get started hacking desec-stack, here is one way to do it.
Requirements. This guide is intended and tested on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. However, many other Linux distributions will also do fine. For desec-stack, docker and docker compose v2 are required. Further tools that are required to start hacking are git and curl. Recommended, but not strictly required for desec-stack development is to use certbot along with Let's Encrypt and PyCharm. jq, httpie, libmariadbclient-dev, libpq-dev, python3-dev (>= 3.11) and python3-venv (>= 3.11) are useful if you want to follow this guide. The webapp requires Node.js. To install everything you need for this guide except docker and docker compose, use
sudo apt install certbot curl git httpie jq libmariadbclient-dev libpq-dev nodejs npm python3-dev python3-venv libmemcached-dev
Get the code. Clone this repository to your favorite location.
git clone git@github.com:desec-io/desec-stack.git
Obtain Domain Names. To run desec-stack, this guide uses a subdomain of dedyn.io provided by desec.io.
Register a deSEC user account. Check out the instructions in our documentation, in particular the Quickstart section.
Register a dedyn.io subdomain to run your desec-stack on it and set up the IP addresses.
For this guide, we assume example.dedyn.io
. Register it with:
DOMAIN=example.dedyn.io http POST https://desec.io/api/v1/domains/ Authorization:"Token ${TOKEN}" name:='"'${DOMAIN}'"'
If you receive an answer that is different from status code 201, chances are that the name you chose is already taken by someone else.
In that case, repeat the last step with a new name.
To setup the necessary IP address records, we create a couple of A and AAAA records that point to localhost.
As preparation, create a JSON file dns.json
with the following content defining the DNS setup for desec-stack:
[ {"type": "A", "ttl":300, "records": ["127.0.0.1"], "subname": "desec"}, {"type": "AAAA", "ttl":300, "records": ["::1"], "subname": "desec"}, {"type": "A", "ttl":300, "records": ["127.0.0.1"], "subname": ".desec"}, {"type": "AAAA", "ttl":300, "records": ["::1"], "subname": ".desec"},
{"type": "A", "ttl":300, "records": ["127.0.0.1"], "subname": "dedyn"},
{"type": "AAAA", "ttl":300, "records": ["::1"], "subname": "dedyn"},
{"type": "A", "ttl":300, "records": ["127.0.0.1"], "subname": "*.dedyn"},
{"type": "AAAA", "ttl":300, "records": ["::1"], "subname": "*.dedyn"}
]
We use the deSEC API to publish the DNS information as defined in dns.json
:
http POST https://desec.io/api/v1/domains/${DOMAIN}/rrsets/ Authorization:"Token ${TOKEN}" < dns.json
Obtain certificates. desec-stack requires SSL certificates for the above-mentioned desec
and dedyn
hostnames as well as for various subdomains.
(For a complete list, see www/README.md
.)
While we recommend to obtain signed certificates from Let's Encrypt, it's also possible to let desec-stack generate self-signed certificates on startup
by just skipping this step. To use the deSEC certbot hook, first download it to an appropriate location and set up your credentials and domain name.
mkdir -p ~/bin cd ~/bin curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/desec-io/desec-certbot-hook/main/hook.sh > desec_certbot_hook.sh touch .dedynauth; chmod 600 .dedynauth echo DEDYN_TOKEN=${TOKEN} >> .dedynauth echo DEDYN_NAME=${DOMAIN} >> .dedynauth chmod +x desec_certbot_hook.sh
Now we use certbot to obtain certificates, using the DNS challenge for authentication.
certbot \ --config-dir certbot/config --logs-dir certbot/logs --work-dir certbot/work \ --manual --text --preferred-challenges dns \ --manual-auth-hook ~/bin/desec_certbot_hook.sh \ --manual-cleanup-hook ~/bin/desec_certbot_hook.sh \ --server https://acme-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/directory \ -d "*.${DOMAIN}" -d "update.dedyn.${DOMAIN}" -d "update4.dedyn.$DOMAIN" -d "update6.dedyn.$DOMAIN" \ -d "checkip.dedyn.${DOMAIN}" -d "checkipv4.dedyn.${DOMAIN}" -d "checkipv6.dedyn.${DOMAIN}" \ certonly
Note that the definition of config, logs and work dir are only necessary if you do not want to run certbot as root.
Verifying the DNS challenge takes a while, so allow this command to take a couple of minutes.
After successfully retrieving the certificate, you can find them in certbot/config/live/$DOMAIN/
.
To make them available to desec-stack (in the default location), we copy certificate and keys.
In the project root directory,
mkdir certs cd certs for SUBNAME in desec www.desec get.desec checkip.dedyn checkipv4.dedyn checkipv6.dedyn dedyn www.dedyn update.dedyn update6.dedyn do ln -s cer ${SUBNAME}.${DOMAIN}.cer ln -s key ${SUBNAME}.${DOMAIN}.key done
cp ~/bin/certbot/config/live/${DOMAIN}/fullchain.pem cer cp ~/bin/certbot/config/live/${DOMAIN}/privkey.pem key
The last two steps need to be repeated whenever the certificates are renewed.
While any location for the certificates is fine, the certs/
folder is configured to be ignored by git so that private keys do not accidentally end up being committed.
Configure desec-stack. As docker compose application, desec-stack is configured by environment variables defined in the .env
file in the project root directory.
Because it contains sensitive information for each deployment, .env
is not part of the repository and ignored by git.
However, we ship .env.default
and .env.dev
with templates for production and development, respectively.
.env.dev
is almost good enough for a basic development system, so let's use that as a basis:
sed "s/^DESECSTACK_DOMAIN=.*/DESECSTACK_DOMAIN=${DOMAIN}/" .env.dev > .env
Optionally, edit the file and
.env
. A convenient option is a MailTrap account..env
to avoid collisions with other local networks.Additionally, the VPN server for the replication network needs to be equipped with a pre-shared key (PSK) and a public key infrastructure (PKI). To generate the PSK, use the openvpn-server container:
docker compose build openvpn-server && docker compose run openvpn-server openvpn --genkey --secret /dev/stdout > openvpn-server/secrets/ta.key
To build the PKI, we recommend easy RSA. Please note that PKI instructions here are for development deployments only! Using this setup for production WILL DEFINITELY result in an INSECURE deployment! To make it available, clone the repository and link to the executable:
cd openvpn-server/secrets
git clone https://github.com/OpenVPN/easy-rsa.git
ln -s easy-rsa/easyrsa3/easyrsa
In order to create a new PKI,
./easyrsa init-pki
./easyrsa build-ca nopass
To make the new PKI's Certificate Authority available to the OpenVPN server,
ln -s pki/ca.crt
To issue a certificate for the OpenVPN server, generate a new key pair, a signing request, and sign the certificate.
./easyrsa gen-req server nopass
./easyrsa sign-req server server # requires interaction
Make the key and certificate available to OpenVPN server:
ln -s pki/issued/server.crt
ln -s pki/private/server.key
As the setup of OpenVPN is completed, return to the project directory:
cd -
Install webapp dependencies. To install the dependencies for the web site and GUI, run
cd webapp/ npm install cd -
Run desec-stack. To run desec-stack, use
./dev
If you run desec-stack for the first time, this will require a couple of downloads and take a while. Once it is up and running, you can query the API home endpoint:
http GET https://desec.${DOMAIN}/api/v1/
Congratulations, you have desec-stack up and running.
A convenient way to create a test user account is via
docker compose exec api python3 manage.py shell -c 'from desecapi.models import User; User.objects.create_user(email="test@example.com", password="test1234");'
but users can also be created by signing up via the web GUI. The latter, however, requires that you can read email that is sent from your local setup. This can be achieved, e.g., by using mailtrap.io.
Of course, as this setup is only on your local machine, DNS information will not be published into the public DNS. However, the desec-stack nameserver is available on localhost port 5321. To check if desec-stack is working as expected, you can query the desec-stack nameserver locally for any information that you saved using your API.
EMAIL=john@example.com PASSWORD=insecure
TOKEN=$(http POST https://desec.${DOMAIN}/api/v1/auth/login/ email:=\"${EMAIL}\" password:=\"${PASSWORD}\" | jq -r .token) http POST https://desec.${DOMAIN}/api/v1/domains/ Authorization:"Token ${TOKEN}" name:='"test.example"' http POST https://desec.${DOMAIN}/api/v1/domains/test.example/rrsets/ Authorization:"Token ${TOKEN}" type:=\"A\" ttl:=60 records:='["127.0.0.254"]'
After registering a user with your API, creating a domain and publishing some info to the DNS, use
dig @localhost -p 5321 test.example
to see if the nameserver is behaving as expected.
(Optional) Configure PyCharm for API Development. As a docker compose application, desec-stack takes a while to start. Additionally, it is hard to connect a debugger to the docker containers. Our recommended solution is to develop the API using Django tests running outside the docker compose application. This will dramatically decrease the time required for running the Django tests and enable just-in-time debugging in PyCharm. Also, it will enable you to browse dependencies and code within PyCharm and thus ease debugging.
To get started, we create a virtual python environment that (to some extent) mimics the python environment in the docker container. In the project root,
cd api python3 -m venv venv # Python >= 3.11 source venv/bin/activate pip install wheel pip install -r requirements.txt
At this point, Django is ready to run in the virtual environment created above.
There are two things to consider when running Django outside the container.
First, the environment variables as defined in the .env
file need to be made available in the shell.
This can be done with
set -a && source ../.env && set +a
Second, to make the tests run efficiently, a couple of settings are different from the production system: passwords are hashed using a fast (but insecure!) method, rate limits are switched off, and so on. To use the fast settings in your shell, run
export DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=api.settings_quick_test
Third, the API needs a postgres database to run the tests. To serve as a test database,
the dbapi
container can be started using a test configuration which exposes the database at
127.0.0.1
. In order to let Django know that the database is at 127.0.0.1
instead of the
usual dbapi
, set an additional environment variable:
export DESECSTACK_DJANGO_TEST=1
Fourth, run the database:
docker compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.test-api.yml up -d dbapi
Finally, you can manage Django using the manage.py
CLI.
As an example, to run the tests, use
python3 manage.py test
Open the project root directory desec-stack
in PyCharm and select File › Settings.
api/
folder as a source folder.api/venv/bin/python3
from the project root.api/
.From the PyCharm menu, select Run › Edit Configurations and click on "Edit configuration templates"; select the "Django tests" template from the list.
.env
file and paste it here.DESECSTACK_DJANGO_TEST
and the value 1
.settings_quick_test
module.Postgres Test Container
docker
compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.test-api.yml up -d dbapi
To see if the test configuration is working, right-click on the api folder in the project view and select Run Test.
(Note that the first attempt may fail in case the dbapi
container does not start up fast enough. In that case, just try again.)
To use code inspection, click on Inspect Code… in PyCharm's Code menu and add a local custom scope with the following pattern:
file:api//.py&&!file:api/venv//&&!file:api/manage.py&&!file:api/api/wsgi.py&&!file:api/desecapi/migrations//*
From this point on, you are set up to use most of PyCharm's convenience features.
.env
file and DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=api.settings_quick_test
need to be configured in Settings › Build, Execution, Deployment › Console › Django Console. (Note that if you need to work with the database, you need to initialize it first by running all migrations; otherwise, the model tables will be missing from the database.)Code quality. We use Black to ensure formatting consistency and minimal diffs. Before you commit Python code into the api/
directory, please run black api/desecapi/
.
To access message queue information of RabbitMQ, use the RabbitMQ management plugin. First, port 15672 of the RabbitMQ
container needs to be exposed (default when using docker-compose.dev.yml
). Then, inside the container, create a user
that can access the RabbitMQ data:
rabbitmq-plugins enable rabbitmq_management
rabbitmqctl add_user admin admin
rabbitmqctl set_user_tags admin administrator
rabbitmqctl set_permissions admin '.*' '.*' '.*'
Then the web-based management interface will be available at http://localhost:15672 with user admin
and password
admin
.