ldns

Local dns server for development.

This basically allows you to have wildcard subdomains on your local machine, which /etc/hosts doesn't allow.

Installation

➜ npm install -g ldns

Usage

➜ ldns -h
 
Usage:
 
ldns [ <options> ... ]
 
Options:
 
--port           Port to bind on.
--zones          Path to JSON file with zones info.
--debug          Switch logging level to debug.
-h, --help       Show this help.
-v, --version    Show ldns version.

Zones

By default the following zones are used.

{
  "dev": {
    "*": "127.0.0.1"
  },
  "docker": {
    "*": "192.168.59.103"
  }
}

These are based on my own use case, where I have a a proxy running on my machine and a docker virtual machine. With the default zones the dev domain (and all its subdomains, ie: app1.dev, app2.dev, ...) will resolve to 127.0.0.1 and the docker domain and all its subdomains resolve to 192.168.59.103.

You can also configure records for subdomains. In the example below vm-1.vms and vm-2.vms resolve to two different IP addresses.

{
  "local": {
    "*": "127.0.0.1"
  },
  "vms": {
    "vm-1": "192.168.59.103",
    "vm-2": "192.168.59.104"
  }
}

Common pitfalls

By default ldns will try to bind to port 53, which means that you need to run ldns as root, otherwise you will get an error like this:

➜ ldns | bunyan
[2015-03-13T22:58:47.214Z] ERROR: ldns/1115 on Lupos-MacBook-Pro-Retina.local: bind EACCES (err.code=EACCES)
    Error: bind EACCES
        at errnoException (dgram.js:458:11)
        at dgram.js:211:28
        at dns.js:72:18
        at process._tickCallback (node.js:442:13)
        at Function.Module.runMain (module.js:499:11)
        at startup (node.js:119:16)
        at node.js:929:3

To run as root on default port (53) and in the background try this:

➜ sudo ldns &>/dev/null &

Or using nohup to dettach the process from the current shell.

➜ sudo nohup ldns &> /dev/null

Otherwise you can specify a higher port number via command line arguments.

➜ ldns --port 15353 | bunyan
➜ ldns --port 15353 --debug | bunyan