this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2023
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leng - a fast DNS server with adblocking, built for self-hosting (github.com)
submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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A few months ago I went on a quest for a DNS server and was dissatisfied with current maintained projects. They were either good at adblocking (Blocky, grimd...) or good at specifying custom DNS (CoreDNS...).

So I forked grimd and embarked on rewriting a good chunk of it for it to address my needs - the result is leng.

  • it is fast
  • it is small
  • it is easy
  • you can specify blocklists and it will fetch them for you
  • you can specify custom DNS records with proper zone file syntax (SRV records, etc)
  • it supports DNS-over-HTTPS so you can stay private
  • it is well-documented
  • can be deployed on systemd, docker, or Nix

I have been running it as my nameserver in a Nomad cluster since! I plan to keep maintaining and improving it, so feel free to give it a try if it also fulfils your needs

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 11 months ago (2 children)

How is PiHole not built for custom DNS? It literally has an entire management page for that.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Last I used PiHole many years back, it was possible to use it as DHCP but not possible to add custom DNS records like TXT, SRV, etc. . Perhaps that’s what OP is trying to solve for?

[–] [email protected] 26 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Pinhole has allowed custom local records for a very long time now

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Including SRV records? I found that some servers (blocky as well) only support very basic CNAME or A records, without being able to specify parameters like TTL, etc.

I also appreciate being able to define this in a file rather than a web UI

[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It's based on dnsmasq. You could always specify custom records, even before there was an option in the web interface. Just create a config file in /etc/dnsmasq.d

Just look up these options: host-record cname srv-host

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

Thanks! I didn't know you could do that. I'll see how it compares to my current solution

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

I do it via dnsmasq, that Pi uses.

I have a ansible playbook, that i use to sync my Piholes.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

You can do the basic records via file. /etc/pihole/custom.list is a hosts formatted file for records so you don't have to use a gui.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

You can set CNAME and DNS. Not much else I need at home for a reverse proxy.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Like [email protected] said - I want to be able to add my own records (SRV, A, CNAME...) so that I can point to the services hosted in my VPN. CoreDNS is good for this but it doesn't also do adblocking. If PiHole can do this, I don't know how.

I also don't need a web UI, DHCP server, and so on: I just want a config file and some prometheus metrics

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Tangential partial offtopic aside: Unless i'm misunderstanding, you're setting this up behind your home router and allowing it on your various devices using a VPN. Am i right? Any details, or even better, guides, on how to replicate this setup? I guess the DNS records on Leng are to be able to call services inside your home LAN by name instead of IPs, which is a nice quality of life upgrade.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

What you described is correct! How to replicate this will depend heavily on your setup.

In my specific scenario, I make the containers of all my apps use leng as my DNS server. If you use plain docker see here, if you use docker compose you can do:

version: 2
services:
 application:
  dns: [10.10.0.0] # address of leng server here!

Personally, I use Nomad, so I specify that in the job file of each service.

Then I use wireguard as my VPN and (in my personal devices) I set the DNS field to the address of the leng server. If you would like more details I can document this approach better in leng's docs :). But like I said, the best way to do this won't be the same if you don't use docker or wireguard.

If you are interested in Nomad and calling services by name instead of IP, you can see this tangentially related blog post of mine as well