[Freedombox-discuss] BIND on FreedomBox.

[A. F. Cano]

I'm obviously misunderstanding what this is supposed to do.

The info blurb of the BIND (Domain Name Server) app says:

  Currently, on FreedomBox, BIND is only used to resolve DNS queries
  for other machines on local network. It is also incompatible with
  sharing Internet connection from FreedomBox.

What I think this should mean is that computers connected to the
internal networks/interfaces would query this DNS server to figure out
where to send packets to other computers on the local networks/interfaces,
and any packets destined to any other computer not on the internal networks
would be forwarded to the DNS server of the internet provider.  If there is
more than one internal interface, the DNS server should know which one to
send the packets to.  How this is done under the hood might not be so simple
as my experience, described a few days ago, of setting up a bridge between
internal interfaces required a re-flash.

However, both internal interfaces have IPv4 Method "shared".  Presumably this
hsppened when I told the initial setup that my FreedomBox is my router.

So I installed the BIND app and, per instructions, configured the DNS of the
WAN interface to 127.0.0.1.

Upon reboot, my worst fears were realized.  The FreedomBox was totally
inaccessible: no route to host via ssh and the browser couldn't connect to
10.42.0.1.  After a minute or 2, it rebooted itself, again and again.  All
I could do is pull the plug, mount the SD card on my main computer and take
out the dns lines in the [ipv4] section of

/etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/FreedomBox WAN.nmconnection

Luckily that was all that was needed.  My previous problem: setting up
forwarding between internal interfaces required a re-flash.

Hot being too well-versed in DNS setup, how would this FreedomBox DNS
server learn about the names of the machines connected to the internal
interfaces?  Is there an automatic/dynacmic way, or should a config file
be created manually?

What is the reason that "shared" interfaces are incompatible with running
a local DNS server?

It would seem to me that, since the FreedomBox DNS only deals with internal
networks, it should only forward to the WAN interface what it can't resolve,
so the DNS of the WAN interface should remain as is to forward to the DHCP
confitured DNS server.  Or am I fundamentally misunderstanding how the
FreedomBox works?

Obviously the state of this app is at best incomplete.  If anyone can tell
me what is missing to achieve what I think it should do, as described above,
I'd be happy to test, now that I have a separate FreedomBox for testing
purposes, running the testing distribution.

Augustine