LuaDNS is a managed DNS service. Git is used to manage domains and Lua
scripts to generate DNS records, changes are deployed to name servers with a simple git push.
What's wrong with traditional aproach?
In our opinion, DNS configurations are best expressed with simple text files.
The problem is that Bind syntax is too noisy and managing tens or hundreds of
domains through a web interface is not a pleasant task.
LuaDNS borrowed convention over configuration
philosophy from Rails.
To accompish it's task LuaDNS is following a few conventions, once you'll understand them you'll love them. :)
It exploits defaults to the maximum to make configurations simple and clear.
Why same thing should be expressed over and over? If we are comfortable with defaults,
why we should pollute our configurations? Domain aliases
should be expressed easily.
- Why source control ?
When working in teams, ability to track changes (who, when, what)
and changes reverting are very important.
- Why scripting ?
Repetitive tasks can be scripted into functions to fight complexity.
Lua is a mature scripting language, designed decade ago and used in
many large projects.
LuaDNS supports most common Resource Records (RR):
A,
AAAA,
CNAME,
MX,
NS,
PTR,
SOA,
SPF,
SRV,
TXT
Initial configuration
To use LuaDNS platform you'll need a LuaDNS account and a GitHub repository.
Follow this easy steps:
- Create a new git repository on GitHub:
- Create a local repository and connect it to freshly created GitHub repository
(replace USER with your GitHub username):
mkdir dns
cd dns
git init
echo 'DNS settings, more on: https://www.luadns.com/' > README.md
git add README.md
git commit -m 'first commit'
git remote add origin git@github.com:USER/dns.git
git push -u origin master
- Edit your LuaDNS account and set your source repository
(replace USER with your GitHub username).
git@github.com:USER/dns.git
- Configure your GitHub repository to notify LuaDNS when you push changes to it,
add a Post-Receive Hook
(Admin -> Service Hooks -> Post-Receive URL):
https://api.luadns.com/notifications/YOUR_API_KEY/push
(You'll find your API_KEY in the API Keys page)
After initial configuration, you are ready to proceed to next step, zone configuration.
Example domain
We'll show you an example using domain example.com, but you should replace example.com
with your domain name.
Change to your git repository created in previous section and add an "example.com"
zone to repository to it:
touch example.com.lua templates.lua
git add example.com.lua templates.lua
Edit example.com.lua and paste the following content:
-- File: example.com.lua
-- Zone: example.com
-- _a variable is replaced with zone name "example.com"
-- ## GitHub pages example
-- More info in "Custom Domains" section here: https://help.github.com/pages/
a(_a, "204.232.175.78")
cname("www", "charlie.github.com")
-- ## Google Apps example
-- We'll host our mail on Google Apps, because we have multiple domains using
-- Google Apps, we'll save snippet as a template (Lua function).
-- All templates should go to templates.lua file.
google_app(_a)
Save the following Lua code to templates.lua:
-- File: templates.lua
-- This file is executed before each .lua file
-- shared code/templates should reside here.
function google_app(domain)
-- mail exchangers
mx(domain, "aspmx.l.google.com", 5)
mx(domain, "alt1.aspmx.l.google.com", 10)
mx(domain, "alt2.aspmx.l.google.com", 10)
mx(domain, "aspmx2.googlemail.com", 20)
mx(domain, "aspmx3.googlemail.com", 20)
-- mail.domain.com alias
cname(concat("mail", domain), "ghs.google.com")
-- SPF record
spf(domain, "v=spf1 a mx include:_spf.google.com ~all")
end
Deploying
Now you are ready to to push your DNS configurations to LuaDNS servers through GitHub.
git commit -m "add example.com domain" .
git push origin master
After git push command, you'll receive an email from LuaDNS.com with the status of your changes.
If everything is OK (domains and records are validated on each push), your domains and records will
be deployed to name servers, if errors are found you'll receive details about the problems
so you can fix them and try again.
Changing name servers at your registrar
After successful deployment, you are ready to switch to LuaDNS name servers
(more about name servers here):
- ns1.luadns.net
- ns2.luadns.net
- ns3.luadns.net
- ns4.luadns.net
Open Source
LuaDNS service was built using many open source technologies. To support open source movement
we are offering a special package to open source projects, more info here.
Alhtough DNS is intended to
publish information,
in some cases you may want to keep your domains and records private,
to accompish this, mark your repository as private.
Bitbucket is offering
free private repositories
(don't forget to configure
repository permissions).
Update:
- "Too noisy" when dealing with multiple domains sharing the same records/similar set of records (a common case).
References:
- Documentation - https://www.luadns.com/help.html
- Example repository - https://github.com/luadns/dns
- GitHub - https://github.com
- Bitbucket - https://bitbucket.org
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