Please explain ZeroTier DNS to me

Maybe I’m having a low IQ moment, who knows? But I just can’t grasp DNS and zerotier for some reason. Or I can’t grasp if what is provided can give me what I need as far as DNS is concerned.

I have my own domain (at gandi dns) for my systems at home.

Is there a way to automatically have DNS entries created or updated (when changed) so that a host with an FQDN for foo.info matches the name+domain?

So for instance lets say I create a host in my zerotier network called “server” in the name/description field. Is there any way to automatically have an A or AAAA record on my DNS server so that I don’t need to do it by hand? A new record that would be called server.foo.info

The goal is to join a host in zerotier then to be able to resolve it easily without having to add entries to /etc/hosts from other hosts.

Apologies ahead of time if I’m not explaining this clearly.

Looks like ZeroNSD is what you’re looking for. It’s not built in to the main zerotier-one software itself, but can run along side it on a machine to become a DNS server and do exactly what you’re describing.

See the Quick Start Guide for more info on setting it up.

Looked through it, not quite sure how I could get it to update a DNS record on an external server. Still feels like I would have to make manual entries to my DNS server.

Yes it would take some manual config for machines not on the zerotier network. For anything on the zerotier network (hosted at https://my.zerotier.com) ZeroNSD automatically creates records for it via the API. If you put server in the Name field on there, it will be served by ZeroNSD as server.foo.info

I went through the documentation quick start, it looks reasonable but I’m not seeing where updates occur.

My DNS provider allows updates of records via remote API key. For my web server for instance that is exposed to the internet I have a python script which uses that API key to update the A record if my ISP’s IP address changes.

I don’t see where the record is coming from in ZeroNSD to my externally hosted DNS unless it assumes I’m running my own DNS locally?

How is Zero NSD updating DNS records on an external DNS server out on the regular internet (not on the zerotier network)?

If you try to resolve a name outside the zone served by ZeroNSD, it will just return whatever its host system’s DNS resolver gets from the public internet.

This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.