1. Introduction

The dynamic LDAP back-end is a plug-in for BIND that provides an LDAP database back-end capabilities. It requires dyndb interface which is present in BIND versions >= 9.11.0rc1.

2. Features

• support for dynamic updates
• SASL authentication
• SyncRepl (RFC 4533) for run-time synchronization with LDAP server
• read-query performance nearly same as with plain BIND
• AXFR and IXFR zone transfers are supported
• DNSSEC in-line signing is supported, including dynamic updates

3. Installation

To install the LDAP back-end, extract the tarball and go to the unpacked directory. Then follow these steps:

$ ./configure --libdir=<libdir>
$ make

Where <libdir> is a directory where your libdns is installed. This is typically going to be /usr/lib or /usr/lib64 on 64 bit systems.

If configure script complains that it Can't obtain libdns version, please verify you have installed bind development files (package bind9-dev or bind-devel) and you exported correct CPPFLAGS via

$ export CPPFLAGS=`isc-config.sh --cflags`

Then, to install, run this as root:

$ make install

This will install the file ldap.so into the <libdir>/bind/ directory.

Alternatively, the latest version can be obtained from Git repository. You can use following commands to prepare latest source tree for compilation:

$ git clone https://git.fedorahosted.org/git/bind-dyndb-ldap.git
$ cd bind-dyndb-ldap
$ autoreconf -fvi

4. LDAP schema

You can find the complete LDAP schema in the documentation directory. An example zone ldif is available in the doc directory.

4.1 Master zone (idnsZone)

Object class idnsZone is equivalent to type master statement in named.conf.

Attributes

• idnsAllowDynUpdate

  Allow dynamic update of records in this zone. If attribute doesn't exist, value dyn_update from plugin configuration will be used.

• idnsAllowQuery

  Specifies BIND9 zone ACL element as one string.

  • Example 1: idnsAllowQuery: 192.0.2.1;

    In the first example above, only the client with 192.0.2.1 IP address is allowed to query records from the zone.

  • Example 2: idnsAllowQuery: !192.0.2.33; 192.0.2.0/24;

    In the second example, queries from client 192.0.2.33 are refused but queries from all other clients in the 192.0.2.0/24 network are allowed.

  You can specify IPv4/IPv6 address, IPv4/IPv6 network address in CIDR format, and any or none keywords. The ! prefix (for example !192.0.2.33) means negation of the ACL element.

  If not set, then zone inherits global allow-query from named.conf.

• idnsAllowTransfer

  Uses same format as idnsAllowQuery. Allows zone transfers for matching clients.

  If not set then zone inherits global allow-transfer from named.conf.

• idnsAllowSyncPTR

  Allow synchronization of A/AAAA records in zone with PTR records in reverse zone. Reverse zone must have Dynamic update allowed. (See idnsAllowDynUpdate attribute and dyn_update configuration parameter.)

• idnsForwardPolicy (default first)

  Specifies BIND9 zone forward policy. Proprietary value none is equivalent to forwarders {}; in BIND configuration, i.e. effectively disables forwarding and ignores idnsForwarders attribute.

  Values first and only are relevant in conjunction with a valid idnsForwarders attribute. Their meaning is same as in BIND9.

• idnsForwarders

  Defines multiple IP addresses to which recursive queries will be forwarded. This is equivalent to forwarders statement in master zone configuration.

  I.e. local BIND replies authoritatively to queries when possible (including authoritative NXDOMAIN answers) so forwarding affects only queries made by BIND to answer recursive queries which cannot be answered locally. Please see https://lists.isc.org/pipermail/bind-users/2006-January/060810.html https://lists.isc.org/pipermail/bind-users/2011-March/083244.html

  It is multi-value attribute: Each IP address (and optional port) has to be in own value. BIND9 syntax for forwarders is required. Optional port can be specified by adding port <number> after IP address. IPv4 and IPv6 addresses are supported. Examples:

  • 1.2.3.4
  • 1.2.3.4 port 553
  • A::B
  • A::B port 553

• idnsName

  Absolute name of DNS zone. It is recommended to use names with trailing period, e.g. example.com.

• idnsSecInlineSigning (default FALSE)

  DNSSEC in-line signing configuration. Value TRUE is equivalent to following zone configuration in named.conf (default BIND values):

    auto-dnssec maintain;
    sig-validity-interval 2592000; # 30 days
    # re-sign interval will be 648000 seconds = 7.5 days
    sig-signing-signatures 10;
    sig-signing-nodes 10;
    sig-signing-type 65534;
    update-check-ksk yes;
    dnssec-loadkeys-interval 60;   # minutes
    key-directory "<plugin-instance-dir>/<zone-name>/keys";
  

  There is no way to change those values at this moment.

• idnsSOAserial

  SOA serial number. It is automatically incremented after each change in LDAP. External changes done by other LDAP clients are detected via RFC 4533 (so-called syncrepl).

  If serial number is lower than current UNIX timestamp, then it is set to the timestamp value. If SOA serial is greater or equal to current timestamp, then the serial is incremented by one. (This is equivalent to BIND option 'serial-update-method unix'.)

  In multi-master LDAP environments it is recommended to make idnsSOAserial attribute non-replicated (locally significant). It is recommended not to use multiple masters for single slave zone if SOA serial is locally significant because serial numbers between masters aren't synchronized. It will cause problems with zone transfers from multiple masters to single slave.

• idnsZoneActive

  Boolean which speicifies if particular DNS zone should be visible to clients or not. This attribute can be changed at run-time.

  Inactive zones are loaded into memory in the same way as active zones. The only difference is that inactive zones are not added to DNS view used by bind-dyndb-ldap.

  Zone will be re-added to DNS view if idnsActiveZone attribute is changed to TRUE so the change should be almost immediate.

  Usual zone maintenance (serial number maintenance, DNSSEC in-line signing etc.) is done for all zones, no matter if the zone is active or not. This allows us to maintain zone journal so IXFR works correctly even after zone re-activation.

• nSEC3PARAMRecord

  NSEC3PARAM resource record definition according to RFC5155. Zone without NSEC3PARAM RR will use NSEC by default.

4.2 Forward zone (idnsForwardZone)

Object class idnsForwardZone is equivalent to type forward statement in named.conf.

Attributes

• idnsForwarders

  Defines multiple IP addresses to which all queries for sub-tree of DNS will be forwarded. This is equivalent to forwarders statement in forward zone configuration.

  It is multi-value attribute: Each IP address (and optional port) has to be in own value. BIND9 syntax for forwarders is required. Optional port can be specified by adding port <number> after IP address. IPv4 and IPv6 addresses are supported. Examples:

  • 1.2.3.4
  • 1.2.3.4 port 553
  • A::B
  • A::B port 553

• idnsForwardPolicy (default first)

  Specifies BIND9 zone forward policy. Proprietary value none is equivalent to forwarders {}; in BIND configuration, i.e. effectively disables forwarding and ignores idnsForwarders attribute.

  Values first and only are relevant in conjunction with a valid idnsForwarders attribute. Their meaning is same as in BIND9.

• idnsName

  Absolute name of DNS zone. It is recommended to use names with trailing period, e.g. example.com.

Forward zones may conflict with automatic empty zones (defined in RFC 6303) because empty zones are authoritative and thus have higher priority than forwarding. Bind-dyndb-ldap will automatically unload empty zones which are super/sub domains of a forward zones if the forwarding policy is only. A warning will be issued (and zone not unloaded) if the policy is first because this policy does not guarantee that queries will not leak to the public Internet.

Unloaded empty zones will not be loaded back even if the forward zone is later deleted. The empty zones will be loaded on each BIND reload.

4.3 Global configuration object (idnsConfigObject)

Object class idnsConfigObject provides global configuration common for all zones.

Attributes

• idnsAllowSyncPTR

  Semantics is equivalent to sync_ptr option described in plugin's config and to idnsAllowSyncPTR attribute in idnsZone.

• idnsForwarders

• idnsForwardPolicy

  Semantics is equivalent to forward statement in named.conf. Syntax is the same as in forward zone, please see previous section.

4.4 Per-server configuration object (idnsServerConfigObject)

Object class idnsConfigObject provides global configuration common for all zones. A plugin instance will read configuration only from entries with matching idnsServerId.

Attributes

• idnsServerId

  Configuration identifier (arbitrary string). A plugin instance will use only objects whose idnsServerId value matches server_id value in plugin's config.

• idnsForwarders

• idnsForwardPolicy

  Same meaning as in global configuration object (idnsConfigObject).

• idnsSOAmName

  Equivalent to fake_mname option in plugin's config.

• idnsSubstitutionVariable

  This attribute associates string value with user-defined name. These named variables can be used later in record template processing. Variable name is specified as LDAP sub-type. (The attribute cannot be used without sub-type. Exactly one instance of each sub-type is required.) For further information please see https://fedorahosted.org/bind-dyndb-ldap/wiki/Design/RecordGenerator

  LIMITATION: Current plugin version supports only ipalocation variable

4.5 Record template (idnsTemplateObject)

Object class idnsTemplateObject provides facility for dynamic resource record generation. The template entry must contain idnsTemplateAttribute with string template.

Optionally the same entry can contain statically defined resource records in *Record attributes. All statically defined record values are ignored when template is present and substitution into template is successful. The substitution is successful only if all variables used by the template string are defined.

Attributes

• idnsTemplateAttribute String subtitution template. All occurrences of {variable_name} are replaced with respective strings from plugin configuration. Remaining parts of the original string are just copied into the output.

  Double-escaped strings \{ \} do not trigger substitution. Nested references will expand only innermost variable: {{var1}} Non-matching parentheses and other garbage will be copied verbatim without triggering an error.

  Resulting resource record type is specified as LDAP sub-type. (The attribute cannot be used without sub-type. Exactly one instance of each sub-type is required.)

  Example - LDIF snippet:

    idnsSubstitutionVariable;ipalocation: brno
    idnsTemplateAttribute;CNAMERecord: server.\{substitutionvariable_ipalocation\}
  

  will generate CNAME record: server.brno

  For further information please see https://fedorahosted.org/bind-dyndb-ldap/wiki/Design/RecordGenerator

5. Configuration

To configure dynamic loading of back-end, you must put a dyndb clause into your named.conf. The clause must then be followed by a string denoting the name of the instance and path to dyndb library.

The name is not that much important, it is passed to the plug-in and is used for logging purposes and for naming working directories.

Library path must point to a shared object file that will be opened and loaded.

Name and library path have to be followed by set of options enclosed between curly brackets. Example:

dyndb "example-ldap" "/usr/lib64/bind/ldap.so" {
	uri "ldap://ldap.example.com";
	base "cn=dns, dc=example,dc=com";
	auth_method "none";
};

5.1 Configuration options

List of configuration options follows:

5.1.1 LDAP connection

• uri

  The Uniform Resource Identifier pointing to the LDAP server we wish to connect to. This string is directly passed to the ldap_initialize(3) function. This option is mandatory. Example: "ldap://ldap.example.com"

• connections (default 2)

  Number of connections the LDAP driver should try to establish to the LDAP server. It's best if this matches the number of threads BIND creates, for performance reasons. However, your LDAP server configuration might only allow certain number of connections per client.

• base This is the search base that will be used by the LDAP back-end to search for DNS zones. This option is mandatory. Example: "cn=dns, dc=example,dc=com";

• auth_method (default "none")

  The method used to authenticate to the LDAP server. Currently supported methods are "none", "simple" and "sasl". The none method is effectively a simple authentication without password.

• bind_dn (default "")

  Distinguished Name used to bind to the LDAP server. If this is empty and the auth_method is set to "simple", the LDAP back-end will fall-back and use the "none" authentication method.

• password (default "")

  Password for simple and SASL authentication. If the authentication method is set to "simple" and the password is empty, the LDAP driver will fall-back to the "none" authentication method.

• sasl_mech (default "GSSAPI")

  Name of the SASL mechanism to be used for negotiation.

• sasl_auth_name

  The user name to be used for SASL authentication.

• sasl_user

  The user name to be used for SASL proxy authorization.

• sasl_password

  The password to use for the SASL authentication.

• sasl_realm

  The SASL realm name.

• krb5_keytab

  Path to the kerberos keytab containing service credentials to be used for SASL authentication. Append the "FILE:" prefix to the file path. Example: "FILE:/etc/named.keytab"

• krb5_principal

  Kerberos principal of the service, used for SASL authentication. If not set then it is copied from "sasl_user" option. Principal is loaded from file specified in "krb5_keytab" option.

• timeout (default 10)

  Timeout (in seconds) of the queries to the LDAP server. If the LDAP server don't respond before this timeout then lookup is aborted and BIND returns SERVFAIL. Value "0" means infinite timeout (no timeout).

• reconnect_interval (default 60)

  Time (in seconds) after that the plugin should try to connect to LDAP server again in case connection is lost and immediate reconnection fails.

• ldap_hostname (default "")

  Sets hostname of the LDAP server. When it is set to "", actual /bin/hostname is used. Please prefer uri option, this option should be used only in special cases, for example when GSSAPI authentication is used and named service has Kerberos principal different from /bin/hostname output.

5.1.2 Special DNS features

• fake_mname

  Ignore value of the idnsSOAmName (primary master DNS name) attribute and use this value instead. This allows multiple BIND processes to share one LDAP database and every BIND reports itself as a primary master in SOA record, for example.

• sync_ptr (default no)

  Set this option to yes if you would like to keep PTR record synchronized with coresponding A/AAAA record for all zones. If this option is set to no, the LDAP driver will check the idnsAllowSyncPTR attribute which specifies the synchronization policy for PTR records in a zone. When an A/AAAA record is deleted the PTR record must point to the same hostname.

• dyn_update (default no)

  Set this option to yes if you would like to allow dynamic zone updates. This setting can be overridden for each zone individually by idnsAllowDynUpdate attribute.

5.1.3 Plumbing

• verbose_checks (default no)

  Set this option to yes if you would like to log all failures in internal CHECK() macros. This option is recommended only for debugging purposes. It could produce huge amount of log messages on a loaded system!

• directory (default is dyndb-ldap/<current instance name from dynamic-db directive>)

  Specifies working directory for plug-in. The path has to be writeable by named because plug-in will create sub-directory for each zone. These sub-directories will contain temporary files like zone dump, zone journal, zone keys etc. The path is relative to directory specified in BIND options. See section 6 (DNSSEC) for examples.

5.2 Sample configuration

Let's take a look at a sample configuration:

options {
	directory "/var/named/";
};

dyndb "my_db_name" "/usr/lib64/bind/ldap.so" {
	uri "ldap://ldap.example.com";
	base "cn=dns, dc=example,dc=com";
	auth_method "none";
};

With this configuration, the LDAP back-end will try to connect to server ldap.example.com with simple authentication, without any password. It will then use RFC 4533 refresh&persist search in the cn=dns,dc=example,dc=com base for entries with object class idnsZone and idnsRecord. For each idnsZone entry it will find, it will register a new zone with BIND. For each idnsRecord entry it will create domain name in particular zone. The LDAP back-end will keep each record it gets from LDAP in its memory.

Working directory for the plug-in will be /var/named/dyndb-ldap/my_db_name/, so hypothetical zone example.com will use sub-directory /var/named/dyndb-ldap/my_db_name/master/example.com/.

5.3 Configuration in LDAP

Some options can be configured in LDAP as idnsConfigObject attributes. Value configured in LDAP has priority over value in configuration file. (This behavior will change in future versions!)

Following options are supported (option = attribute equivalent):

option	LDAP attribute
forwarders	idnsForwarders (BIND native option)
forward	idnsForwardPolicy (BIND native option)
sync_ptr	idnsAllowSyncPTR

Forward policy option cannot be set without setting forwarders at the same time.

6. DNSSEC support

In-line signing support in this plugin allows to use this BIND feature for zones in LDAP.

Signatures are automatically generated by plugin during zone loading and signatures are never written back to LDAP. DNSKEY, RRSIG, NSEC and NSEC3 records in LDAP are ignored because they are automatically managed by BIND.

NSEC3 can be enabled by writting NSEC3PARAM RR to particular zone object in LDAP.

Dynamic updates made to in-line signed zones are written back to LDAP as usual and respective signatures are automatically re-generated as necessary.

Key management has to be handled by user, i.e. user has to generate/delete keys and configure key timestamps as appropriate.

Key directory for particular DNS zone is automatically configured to value:

<plugin-instance-dir>/master/<zone-name>/keys

<plugin-instance-dir> is described in section 5.1.3 of this file. <zone-name> is (transformed) textual representation of zone name without trailing period.

Zone name will be automatically transformed before usage:

• root zone is translated to @ to prevent collision with filesystem .
• digits, hyphen and underscore are left intact
• letters of English alphabet are downcased
• all other characters are escaped using %ASCII_HEX form, e.g. / => %2F
• final dot is omited
• labels are separated with .

Example

• BIND directory: /var/named
• bind-dyndb-ldap directory: dyndb-ldap
• LDAP instance name: ipa
• DNS zone: example.com.
• Resulting keys directory: /var/named/dyndb-ldap/ipa/master/example.com/keys

Character encoding

• DNS zone: TEST.0/1.a.
• Resulting keys directory: /var/named/dyndb-ldap/ipa/master/test.0%2F1.a/keys

Make sure that keys directory and files is readable by user used for BIND.

7. License

This package is licensed under the GNU General Public License, version 2 only. See file COPYING for more information.