DomU DNS

A lightweight, privacy-first DNS server for Raspberry Pi 3B — ad blocking, authoritative zones, RFC 2136 DDNS, Split-Horizon, Let's Encrypt DNS-01, and Master/Slave clustering in a single Go binary using ~25 MB RAM.

Website & Docs: domudns.net

Why DomU DNS?

Every existing DNS solution was either too heavy for a Raspberry Pi 3B or lacked features needed for a proper homelab:

Feature	DomU DNS	Pi-hole	AdGuard Home	Technitium
RAM on Pi 3B	~25 MB	80–160 MB	50–130 MB	200 MB+
Ad blocking (220k+ domains)	✅	✅	✅	✅
Authoritative DNS zones	✅	❌	❌	✅
RFC 2136 DDNS (TSIG)	✅	❌	❌	✅
Split-Horizon DNS	✅	❌	❌	Partial
Zone Transfer AXFR/IXFR	✅	❌	❌	✅
Master/Slave Cluster	✅	❌	❌	✅
DoH + DoT	✅	Partial	✅	✅
Let's Encrypt DNS-01	✅	❌	❌	Partial
DNSSEC signing	✅	❌	❌	✅
LRU Cache + Warming	✅	❌	❌	❌
No database required	✅	❌	✅	✅
Runtime	Go binary	C/FTL+dnsmasq	Go	.NET runtime

Features

🛡️ Ad & Tracker Blocking — 220k+ domains, O(1) lookup, wildcard/regex support
🌐 Authoritative DNS Zones — A, AAAA, MX, CNAME, PTR, TXT, SRV, CAA, NS; JSON file backend
🔄 RFC 2136 DDNS — ISC dhcpd / Kea DHCP integration via TSIG; auto PTR records
🔀 Split-Horizon DNS — different answers for internal vs. external clients
🔗 Master/Slave Cluster — HMAC-SHA256, atomic JSON writes, no database
🔒 DoH + DoT — RFC 8484 / RFC 7858 with your own certificates
🔐 Let's Encrypt DNS-01 — built-in ACME provider; Traefik httpreq, Certbot plugin, acme.sh/Proxmox
🚫 DNS Rebinding Protection — blocks external domains resolving to private IPs
⚡ LRU Cache + Warming — preloads top-N query-log domains at startup
📊 Next.js Dashboard — real-time stats, zone management, query log, cluster status
🔁 Zone Transfer AXFR/IXFR — ACL-protected, TCP-only
📡 DHCP Lease Sync — dnsmasq / FritzBox lease files → DNS records
🔑 Named API Keys — per-service API keys with revocation
📈 Prometheus Metrics — queries, latency, cache hit rate
⚙️ Live Config Reload — upstream DNS, block mode, log level without restart

Performance

Metric	Value
RAM on Raspberry Pi 3B	~25 MB
Blocklist size	220,000+ domains
Blocklist lookup	O(1) — hash map
Response time (cache hit)	0 ms
Response time (authoritative)	0 ms
Response time (upstream)	1–8 ms
Cache capacity	10,000 entries (~5 MB)

Quick Start

# 1. Clone & build for Raspberry Pi 3B (ARMv7)
git clone https://github.com/mw7101/domudns.git
cd domudns && make build-arm

# 2. Copy to Pi
scp build/domudns-arm pi@<PI_IP>:/usr/local/bin/domudns

# 3. Install service & start
scp scripts/domudns.service pi@<PI_IP>:/tmp/
ssh pi@<PI_IP> "sudo mv /tmp/domudns.service /etc/systemd/system/ && sudo systemctl enable --now domudns"

# 4. Open setup wizard
open http://<PI_IP>/setup

No database required. All data is stored as JSON files under /var/lib/domudns/data/. Full docs: domudns.net/docs/quickstart.html

Installation

Prerequisites

Go 1.24+ (build machine only)
Raspberry Pi 3B with Debian Bookworm/Raspbian — or any Linux AMD64/ARM64/ARMv7
SSH access to the target host
Port 53 free (stop systemd-resolved if needed)

Step 1 — Build

git clone https://github.com/mw7101/domudns.git
cd domudns

# Raspberry Pi 3B (ARMv7)
make build-arm

# ARM64 (Pi 4/5, modern SBCs)
make build-arm64

# AMD64 (x86 server, NAS, VPS)
make build

Step 2 — Install on target host

# Create directories
ssh pi@<PI_IP> "sudo mkdir -p /etc/domudns /var/lib/domudns/data /usr/local/bin"

# Copy binary
scp build/domudns-arm pi@<PI_IP>:/tmp/domudns
ssh pi@<PI_IP> "sudo mv /tmp/domudns /usr/local/bin/domudns && sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/domudns"

Step 3 — Minimal Configuration

Create /etc/domudns/config.yaml on the host:

cluster:
  role: "master"
  data_dir: "/var/lib/domudns/data"

dnsserver:
  listen: "[::]:53"
  upstream:
    - "9.9.9.9"           # Quad9
    - "149.112.112.112"

http:
  listen: ":80"

system:
  log_level: "info"

Step 4 — Start

scp scripts/domudns.service pi@<PI_IP>:/tmp/
ssh pi@<PI_IP> "
  sudo mv /tmp/domudns.service /etc/systemd/system/
  sudo systemctl daemon-reload
  sudo systemctl enable --now domudns
"

Step 5 — First-Time Setup

Open http://<PI_IP>/setup in your browser. The wizard guides you through:

Set admin username and password
Generate a secure API key
Configure blocklist sources
Add your local DNS zones

Configuration

Full reference: domudns.net/docs/config.html

cluster:
  role: "master"              # "master" | "slave"
  data_dir: "/var/lib/domudns/data"
  # slaves:
  #   - "http://<SLAVE_IP>:80"

dnsserver:
  listen: "[::]:53"
  upstream:
    - "9.9.9.9"
    - "149.112.112.112"
  cache:
    enabled: true
    max_entries: 10000
    warmup_count: 200         # Preload top domains from query log at startup
  # DNS over HTTPS (RFC 8484)
  doh:
    enabled: false
    path: "/dns-query"
  # DNS over TLS (RFC 7858)
  dot:
    enabled: false
    listen: "[::]:853"

blocklist:
  enabled: true
  file_path: "/var/lib/domudns/blocklist.hosts"
  fetch_interval: 24h
  block_mode: "zero_ip"       # "zero_ip" | "nxdomain"
  default_urls:
    - "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StevenBlack/hosts/master/hosts"

http:
  listen: "0.0.0.0:80"

system:
  log_level: info
  metrics:
    enabled: true
    listen: "0.0.0.0:9090"

Environment Variables

# Cluster sync secret (HMAC-SHA256, same on all nodes — required for clustering)
export DOMUDNS_SYNC_SECRET="<64-hex-characters>"

High Availability Cluster

Pi 1 (Master) ──── HTTP Push ──→ Pi 2 (Slave)

Master pushes zone/blocklist/config changes to all slaves via HMAC-SHA256-signed HTTP
Slaves poll master as fallback every 30s
Set both IPs as DNS servers in your router's DHCP settings → automatic failover

# Master (/etc/domudns/config.yaml)
cluster:
  role: "master"
  slaves:
    - "http://<SLAVE_IP>:80"

# Slave (/etc/domudns/config.yaml)
cluster:
  role: "slave"
  master_url: "http://<MASTER_IP>:80"

Full guide: domudns.net/docs/cluster.html

Let's Encrypt DNS-01

DomU DNS acts as a built-in ACME DNS-01 provider — no open port 80 required. Works with:

Traefik — native httpreq provider support
Certbot — DNS plugin (certbot-dns-domudns)
acme.sh / Proxmox — shell hook script included

Full guide: domudns.net/docs/letsencrypt.html

DNS Architecture

Incoming query (port 53)
    ↓
1. Blocklist check (O(1) hash lookup)
    ↓
2. DDNS UPDATE handler (RFC 2136, TSIG)
    ↓
3. AXFR/IXFR handler (zone transfers)
    ↓
4. ACME challenge TXT (_acme-challenge.*)
    ↓
5. Authoritative zone (Split-Horizon view-aware)
    ↓
6. LRU Cache
    ↓
7. Conditional forwarding (domain-specific upstreams)
    ↓
8. Default upstream (round-robin UDP, TCP fallback)
    ↓
9. DNS Rebinding Protection
    ↓
Return response

REST API

Full reference: domudns.net/docs/api.html

# Create a zone
curl -X POST http://<PI_IP>/api/zones \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <API_KEY>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"domain": "home.lan", "ttl": 3600}'

# Add a record
curl -X POST http://<PI_IP>/api/zones/home.lan/records \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <API_KEY>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"name": "nas", "type": "A", "ttl": 3600, "value": "192.168.1.100"}'

# Live config update (no restart)
curl -X PATCH http://<PI_IP>/api/config \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <API_KEY>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"dnsserver": {"upstream": ["9.9.9.9", "149.112.112.112"]}}'

Operating Modes

Mode	Description	Config
Standalone	Single node, full functionality	`role: "master"`, no `slaves:`
Master	Pushes changes to slaves	`role: "master"` + `slaves: [...]`
Slave	Receives from master, read-only API	`role: "slave"` + `master_url: ...`

Development

make test           # All tests (unit + integration + security)
make test-unit
make test-integration
make lint && make fmt
sudo make run       # Port 53 requires root

Troubleshooting

# Service status
sudo systemctl status domudns
sudo journalctl -u domudns -f

# Test DNS
dig @<PI_IP> google.com
dig @<PI_IP> ads.doubleclick.net   # Should return 0.0.0.0 (blocked)

# Health check
curl http://<PI_IP>/api/health

# Reset password (forgot credentials)
echo '{}' > /var/lib/domudns/data/auth.json
sudo systemctl restart domudns
# → login with admin/admin → setup wizard

License

MIT License — see LICENSE

Name		Name	Last commit message	Last commit date
Latest commit History 10 Commits
.claude		.claude
.github/workflows		.github/workflows
cmd		cmd
configs		configs
dashboard		dashboard
docs		docs
internal		internal
monitoring		monitoring
pkg		pkg
scripts		scripts
test		test
.cursorignore		.cursorignore
.dockerignore		.dockerignore
.gitignore		.gitignore
CHANGELOG.md		CHANGELOG.md
Dockerfile		Dockerfile
Makefile		Makefile
README.md		README.md
docker-compose.yml		docker-compose.yml
domudns		domudns
go.mod		go.mod
go.sum		go.sum

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Repository files navigation

DomU DNS

Why DomU DNS?

Features

Performance

Quick Start

Installation

Prerequisites

Step 1 — Build

Step 2 — Install on target host

Step 3 — Minimal Configuration

Step 4 — Start

Step 5 — First-Time Setup

Configuration

Environment Variables

High Availability Cluster

Let's Encrypt DNS-01

DNS Architecture

REST API

Operating Modes

Development

Troubleshooting

License

About

Contributors

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Repository files navigation

DomU DNS

Why DomU DNS?

Features

Performance

Quick Start

Installation

Prerequisites

Step 1 — Build

Step 2 — Install on target host

Step 3 — Minimal Configuration

Step 4 — Start

Step 5 — First-Time Setup

Configuration

Environment Variables

High Availability Cluster

Let's Encrypt DNS-01

DNS Architecture

REST API

Operating Modes

Development

Troubleshooting

License

About

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