Oracle backend

Native	Yes
Master	Yes
Slave	Yes
Superslave	Yes
Autoserial	Yes
DNSSEC	Yes
Comments	No
Module name	oracle
Launch name	oracle

This is the Oracle Database backend, completely rewritten for the 3.0 release, with easily configurable SQL statements, allowing you to graft PowerDNS functionality onto any Oracle database of your choosing.

The Oracle backend is difficult, and possibly illegal, to distribute in binary form. To use it, you will probably need to compile PowerDNS from source. OCI headers are expected in $ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/public, and OCI libraries in $ORACLE_HOME/lib. That is where they should be with a working installation of the full Oracle Database client. Oracle InstantClient should work as well, but you will need to make the libraries and headers available in appropriate paths.

This backend uses two kinds of database connections. First, it opens a session pool. Connections from this pool are used only for queries reading DNS data from the database. Second, it opens normal (non-pooled) connections on demand for any kind of write access. The reason for this split is to allow redundancy by replication. Each DNS frontend server can have a local read-only replicated instance of your database. Open the session pool to the local replicated copy, and all data will be available with high performance, even if the main database goes down. The writing connections should go directly to the main database.

Of course, if you do not require this kind of redundancy, or want to avoid the substantial Oracle Database licensing costs, all connections can just go to the same database with the same credentials. Also, the write connections should be entirely unnecessary if you do not plan to use either master or slave mode.

Configuration Parameters

oracle-pool-database, oracle-pool-username, oracle-pool-password

The database to use for read access. OracleBackend will try to create a session pool, so make sure this database user has the necessary permissions. If your connection requires environment variables to be set, e.g. ORACLE_HOME, NLS_LANG, or LD_LIBRARY_PATH, make sure these are set when PowerDNS runs. /etc/default/pdns might help.

oracle-master-database, oracle-master-username, oracle-master-password

The database to use for write access. These are normal connections, not a session pool. The backend may open more than one at a time.

oracle-session-min, oracle-session-max, oracle-session-inc

Parameters for the connection pool underlying the session pool. OCI will open session-min connections at startup, and open more connections as needed, session-inc at a time, until session-max connections are open.

oracle-nameserver-name

This can be set to an arbitrary string that will be made available in the optional bind variable :nsname for all SQL statements. You can use this to run multiple PowerDNS instances off the same database, while serving different zones.

There are many more options that are used to define the different SQL statements. These will be discussed after the reference database schema has been explained.

The Database Schema

You can find an example database schema in schema.sql in the PowerDNS source distribution. It is intended more as a starting point to come up with a schema that works well for your organisation, than as something you should run as it is. As long as the semantics of the SQL statements still work out, you can store your DNS data any way you like.

You should read this while having schema.sql to hand. Columns will not be specifically explained where their meaning is obvious.

Note: All FQDNs should be specified in lower case and without a trailing dot. Where things are lexicographically compared or sorted, make sure a sane ordering is used. 'NLS_LANG=AMERICAN_AMERICA.AL32UTF8' should generally work well enough; when in doubt, enforce a plain ordering with "NLSSORT(value, 'NLS_SORT = BINARY')".

Zones Table

This table lists the zones for which PowerDNS is supposed to be an authoritative nameserver, plus a small amount of information related to master/slave mode.

name

The FQDN of the zone apex, e.g. 'example.com'.

type

Describes how PowerDNS should host the zone. Valid values are 'NATIVE', 'MASTER', and 'SLAVE'. PowerDNS acts as an authoritative nameserver for the zone in all modes. In slave mode, it will additionally attempt to acquire the zone's content from a master server. In master mode, it will additionally send 'NOTIFY' packets to other nameservers for the zone when its content changes.

Tip: There is a global setting to make PowerDNS send 'NOTIFY' packets in slave mode.

last_check

This value, updated by PowerDNS, is the unix timestamp of the last successful attempt to check this zone for freshness on the master.

refresh

The number of seconds PowerDNS should wait after a successful freshness check before performing another one. This value is also found in the zone's SOA record. You may want to make sure to put the same thing in both places.

serial

The serial of the version of the zone's content we are hosting now. This value is also found in the zone's SOA record. You may want to make sure to put the same thing in both places.

notified_serial

The latest serial for which we have sent NOTIFY packets. Updated by PowerDNS.

The Zonemasters and ZoneAlsoNotify Tables

These are lists of hosts PowerDNS will interact with for a zone in master/slave mode. 'Zonemasters' lists the hosts PowerDNS will attempt to pull zone transfers from, and accept 'NOTIFY' packets from. 'ZoneAlsoNotify' lists hosts PowerDNS will send 'NOTIFY' packets to, in addition to any hosts that have NS records.

Host entries can be IPv4 or IPv6 addresses, in string representation. If you need to specify a port, use 192.0.2.4:5300 notation for IPv4 and brackets for IPv6: [2001:db8::1234]:5300.

The Supermasters Table

In superslave mode, PowerDNS can accept 'NOTIFY' packets for zones that have not been defined in the zone table yet. PowerDNS will then create an entry for the zone and attempt a zone transfer. This table defines the list of acceptable sources for supernotifications.

name

An identifying string for this entry. Only used for logging.

ip

The alleged originating IP address of the notification.

nameserver

The FQDN of an authoritative nameserver.

A supernotification will be accepted if an entry is found such that the notification came from 'ip' and 'nameserver' appears in an NS record for that zone.

The ZoneMetadata Table

This is a per-zone key-value store for various things PowerDNS needs to know that are not part of the zone's content or handled by other tables. Depending on your needs, you may not want this to exist as an actual table, but simulate this in PL/SQL instead.

The currently defined metadata types are:

'PRESIGNED'

If set to 1, PowerDNS should assume that DNSSEC signatures for this zone exist in the database and use them instead of signing records itself. For a slave zone, this will also signal to the master that we want DNSSEC records when attempting a zone transfer.

'NSEC3PARAM'

The NSEC3 hashing parameters for the zone.

'TSIG-ALLOW-AXFR'

The value is the name of a TSIG key. A client will be allowed to AXFR from us if the request is signed with that key.

'AXFR-MASTER-TSIG'

The value is the name of a TSIG key. Outgoing NOTIFY packets for this zone will be signed with that key.

The Tables for Cryptographic Keys

We have two of them: 'TSIGKeys' for symmetric TSIG keys, and 'ZoneDNSKeys' for DNSSEC signing keys.

The Records Table

The actual DNS zone contents are stored here.

zone_id

The zone this records belongs to. Normally, this is obvious. When you are dealing with zone delegations, you have to insert some records into the parent zone of their actual zone. See also auth.

fqdn

The owner name of this record. Again, this is lower case and without a trailing dot.

revfqdn

This should be a string that consists of the labels of the owner name, in reverse order, with spaces instead of dots separating them, for example:

'www.example.com' => 'com example www'

This is used as a quick and dirty way to get canonical zone ordering. You can chose a more correct and much more complicated implementation instead if you prefer. In the reference schema, this is automatically set by a trigger.

fqdnhash

The NSEC3 hash of the owner name. The reference schema provides code and a trigger to calculate this, but they are not production quality. The recommendation is to load the dnsjava classes into your database and use their facilities for dealing with DNS names and NSEC3 hashes.

ttl

The TTL for the record set. This should be the same for all members of a record set, but PowerDNS will quietly use the minimum if it encounters different values.

type

The type of the record, as a canonical identification string, e.g. 'AAAA' or 'MX'. You can set this and 'content' NULL to indicate a name that exists, but doesn't carry any record (a so called empty non-terminal) for NSEC/NSEC3 ordering purposes.

content

The data part of the DNS record, in canonical string representation, except that if this includes FQDNs, they should be specified without a trailing dot.

last_change

The unix timestamp of the last change to this record. Used only for the deprecated autoserial feature. You can omit this unless you want to use that feature.

auth

0 or 1 depending on whether this record is an authoritative member of the zone specified in zone_id. These are the rules for determining that: A record is an authoritative member of the zone its owner name belongs to, except for DS records, which are authoritative members of the parent zone. Delegation records, that is, NS records and related A/AAAA glue records, are additionally non-authoritative members of the parent zone.

PowerDNS has a function to automatically set this. OracleBackend doesn't support that. Do it in the database.

The SQL Statements

Fetching DNS records

There are five queries to do this. They all share the same set of return columns:

• fqdn: The owner name of the record.
• ttl: The TTL of the record set.
• type: The type of the record.
• content: The content of the record.
• zone_id: The numerical identifier of the zone the record belongs to. A record can belong to two zones (delegations/glue), in which case it may be returned twice.
• last_change: The unix timestamp of the last time this record was changed. Can safely be set as a constant 0, unless you use the autoserial feature.
• auth: 1 or 0 depending on the zone membership (authoritative or not).

Record sets (records for the same name of the same type) must appear consecutively, which means ORDER BY clauses are needed in some places. Empty non-terminals should be suppressed.

The queries differ in which columns are restricted by 'WHERE' clauses:

oracle-basic-query

Looking for records based on owner name and type. Default:

SELECT fqdn, ttl, type, content, zone_id, last_change, auth
FROM Records
WHERE type = :type AND fqdn = lower(:name)

oracle-basic-id-query

Looking for records from one zone based on owner name and type. Default:

SELECT fqdn, ttl, type, content, zone_id, last_change, auth
FROM Records
WHERE type = :type AND fqdn = lower(:name) AND zone_id = :zoneid

oracle-any-query

Looking for records based on owner name. Default:

SELECT fqdn, ttl, type, content, zone_id, last_change, auth
FROM Records
WHERE fqdn = lower(:name)
  AND type IS NOT NULL
ORDER BY type

oracle-any-id-query

Looking for records from one zone based on owner name. Default:

SELECT fqdn, ttl, type, content, zone_id, last_change, auth
FROM Records
WHERE fqdn = lower(:name)
  AND zone_id = :zoneid
  AND type IS NOT NULL
ORDER BY type

oracle-list-query

Looking for all records from one zone. Default:

SELECT fqdn, ttl, type, content, zone_id, last_change, auth
FROM Records
WHERE zone_id = :zoneid
  AND type IS NOT NULL
ORDER BY fqdn, type

Zone Metadata and TSIG

oracle-get-zone-metadata-query

Fetch the content of the metadata entries of type ':kind' for the zone called ':name', in their original order. Default:

SELECT md.meta_content
FROM Zones z JOIN ZoneMetadata md ON z.id = md.zone_id
WHERE z.name = lower(:name) AND md.meta_type = :kind
ORDER BY md.meta_ind

oracle-del-zone-metadata-query

Delete all metadata entries of type ':kind' for the zone called ':name'. You can skip this if you do not plan to manage zones with the pdnsutil tool. Default:

DELETE FROM ZoneMetadata md
WHERE zone_id = (SELECT id FROM Zones z WHERE z.name = lower(:name))
AND md.meta_type = :kind

oracle-set-zone-metadata-query

Create a metadata entry. You can skip this if you do not plan to manage zones with the pdnsutil tool. Default:

INSERT INTO ZoneMetadata (zone_id, meta_type, meta_ind, meta_content)
VALUES (
  (SELECT id FROM Zones WHERE name = lower(:name)),
  :kind, :i, :content
)

oracle-get-tsig-key-query

Retrieved the TSIG key specified by ':name'. Default:

SELECT algorithm, secret
FROM TSIGKeys
WHERE name = :name

DNSSEC

oracle-get-zone-keys-query

Retrieve the DNSSEC signing keys for a zone. Default:

SELECT k.id, k.flags, k.active, k.keydata
FROM ZoneDNSKeys k JOIN Zones z ON z.id = k.zone_id
WHERE z.name = lower(:name)

oracle-del-zone-key-query

Delete a DNSSEC signing key. You can skip this if you do not plan to manage zones with the pdnsutil tool. Default:

DELETE FROM ZoneDNSKeys WHERE id = :keyid

oracle-add-zone-key-query

Add a DNSSEC signing key. You can skip this if you do not plan to manage zones with the pdnsutil tool. Default:

INSERT INTO ZoneDNSKeys (id, zone_id, flags, active, keydata) "
VALUES (
  zonednskeys_id_seq.NEXTVAL,
  (SELECT id FROM Zones WHERE name = lower(:name)),
  :flags,
  :active,
  :content
) RETURNING id INTO :keyid

oracle-set-zone-key-state-query

Enable or disable a DNSSEC signing key. You can skip this if you do not plan to manage zones with the pdnsutil tool. Default:

UPDATE ZoneDNSKeys SET active = :active WHERE id = :keyid

oracle-prev-next-name-query

Determine the predecessor and successor of an owner name, in canonical zone ordering. See the reference implementation for the quick and dirty way, and the RFCs for the full definition of canonical zone ordering.

This statement is a PL/SQL block that writes into two of the bind variables, not a query.

Default:

BEGIN
  get_canonical_prev_next(:zoneid, :name, :prev, :next);
END;

oracle-prev-next-hash-query

Given an NSEC3 hash, this call needs to return its predecessor and successor in NSEC3 zone ordering into :prev and :next, and the FQDN of the predecessor into :unhashed. Default:

BEGIN
  get_hashed_prev_next(:zoneid, :hash, :unhashed, :prev, :next);
END;

Incoming AXFR

oracle-zone-info-query

Get some basic information about the named zone before doing master/slave things. Default:

SELECT id, name, type, last_check, serial, notified_serial
FROM Zones
WHERE name = lower(:name)

oracle-delete-zone-query

Delete all records for a zone in preparation for an incoming zone transfer. This happens inside a transaction, so if the transfer fails, the old zone content will still be there. Default:

DELETE FROM Records WHERE zone_id = :zoneid

oracle-insert-record-query

Insert a record into the zone during an incoming zone transfer. This happens inside the same transaction as delete-zone, so we will not end up with a partially transferred zone. Default:

INSERT INTO Records (id, fqdn, zone_id, ttl, type, content)
VALUES (records_id_seq.NEXTVAL, lower(:name), :zoneid, :ttl, :type, :content)

oracle-finalize-axfr-query

A block of PL/SQL to be executed after a zone transfer has successfully completed, but before committing the transaction. A good place to locate empty non-terminals, set the auth bit and NSEC3 hashes, and generally do any post-processing your schema requires. The do-nothing default:

DECLARE
  zone_id INTEGER := :zoneid;
BEGIN
  NULL;
END;

Master/Slave Stuff

oracle-unfresh-zones-query

Return a list of zones that need to be checked and their master servers. Return multiple rows, identical except for the master address, for zones with more than one master. Default:

SELECT z.id, z.name, z.last_check, z.serial, zm.master
FROM Zones z JOIN Zonemasters zm ON z.id = zm.zone_id
WHERE z.type = 'SLAVE'
  AND (z.last_check IS NULL OR z.last_check + z.refresh < :ts)
ORDER BY z.id

oracle-zone-set-last-check-query

Set the last check timestamp after a successful check. Default:

UPDATE Zones SET last_check = :lastcheck WHERE id = :zoneid

oracle-updated-masters-query

Return a list of zones that need to have NOTIFY packets sent out. Default:

SELECT id, name, serial, notified_serial
FROM Zones
WHERE type = 'MASTER'
AND (notified_serial IS NULL OR notified_serial < serial)

oracle-zone-set-notified-serial-query

Set the last notified serial after packets have been sent. Default:

UPDATE Zones SET notified_serial = :serial WHERE id = :zoneid

oracle-also-notify-query

Return a list of hosts that should be notified, in addition to any nameservers in the NS records, when sending NOTIFY packets for the named zone. Default:

SELECT an.hostaddr
FROM Zones z JOIN ZoneAlsoNotify an ON z.id = an.zone_id
WHERE z.name = lower(:name)

oracle-zone-masters-query

Return a list of masters for the zone specified by id. Default:

SELECT master
FROM Zonemasters
WHERE zone_id = :zoneid

oracle-is-zone-master-query

Return a row if the specified host is a registered master for the named zone. Default:

SELECT zm.master
FROM Zones z JOIN Zonemasters zm ON z.id = zm.zone_id
WHERE z.name = lower(:name) AND zm.master = :master

Superslave Stuff

oracle-accept-supernotification-query

If a supernotification should be accepted from ':ip', for the master nameserver ':ns', return a label for this supermaster. Default:

SELECT name
FROM Supermasters
WHERE ip = :ip AND nameserver = lower(:ns)

oracle-insert-slave-query

A supernotification has just been accepted, and we need to create an entry for the new zone. Default:

INSERT INTO Zones (id, name, type)
VALUES (zones_id_seq.NEXTVAL, lower(:zone), 'SLAVE')
RETURNING id INTO :zoneid

oracle-insert-master-query

We need to register the first master server for the newly created zone. Default:

INSERT INTO Zonemasters (zone_id, master)
VALUES (:zoneid, :ip)