Configuration

This section contains information about how to configure your Django projects to use django-powerdns-manager and also contains a quick reference of the available settings that can be used in order to customize the functionality of this application.

Configuring your project

In the Django project’s settings module, add powerdns_manager to the INSTALLED_APPS setting:

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    ...
    'powerdns_manager',
)

Using a dedicated database for your DNS server

It is highly recommended to configure django-powerdns-manager to use a different database than the rest of the apps of the Django project for security and performance reasons.

The PowerdnsManagerDbRouter database router is provided for this purpose. All you need to do, is configure an extra database in settings.py named powerdns and add this router to the DATABASE_ROUTERS list.

The following example assumes using SQLite databases, but your are free to use any database backend you want, provided that it is also supported by the PowerDNS server software:

DATABASES = {
    'default': {    # Used by all apps of the Django project except django-powerdns-manager
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.sqlite3', # Add 'postgresql_psycopg2', 'mysql', 'sqlite3' or 'oracle'.
        'NAME': 'main.db',               # Or path to database file if using sqlite3.
        'USER': '',                      # Not used with sqlite3.
        'PASSWORD': '',                  # Not used with sqlite3.
        'HOST': '',                      # Set to empty string for localhost. Not used with sqlite3.
        'PORT': '',                      # Set to empty string for default. Not used with sqlite3.
    },
    'powerdns': {    # Used by django-powerdns-manager and PowerDNS server
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.sqlite3', # Add 'postgresql_psycopg2', 'mysql', 'sqlite3' or 'oracle'.
        'NAME': 'powerdns.db',           # Or path to database file if using sqlite3.
        'USER': '',                      # Not used with sqlite3.
        'PASSWORD': '',                  # Not used with sqlite3.
        'HOST': '',                      # Set to empty string for localhost. Not used with sqlite3.
        'PORT': '',                      # Set to empty string for default. Not used with sqlite3.
    }
}

DATABASE_ROUTERS = ['powerdns_manager.routers.PowerdnsManagerDbRouter']

The configuration above indicates that main.db will be used by all the apps of the Django project, except django-powerdns-manager. The powerdns.db database will only be used by django-powerdns-manager.

PowerDNS should also be configured to send queries to powerdns.db.

Migrate the project databases

Migrate the project’s databases using the following command:

python manage.py migrate
python manage.py migrate --database=powerdns

URLS

Add the powerdns_manager specific URL patterns to the urls.py file of your project:

# URLs for powerdns_manager
urlpatterns.append(
    url('^powerdns/', include('powerdns_manager.urls')),
)

Load default group

This step is optional, but recommended for multiuser environments..

django-powerdns-manager supports multiple users. Before non-superusers are able to add DNS data, a superuser must grant them permission to do so. In a typical Django project this is done by assigning the required permissions directly to the users or to a group, which the users are member of.

django-powerdns-manager facilitates this process by providing a default group, named PowerDNS Managers, which has all the required permissions to add DNS information to the database with the exception of permissions to add/change/delete supermaster servers. Managing data of the supermasters table is left by default to Django superusers.

To load this default group run the following command:

python manage.py loaddata default_pdns_groups

Please not that the default_pdns_groups fixture is primary key agnostic so as to be imported without issues.

Settings reference

The following settings can be specified in the Django project’s settings module to customize the functionality of django-powerdns-manager.

PDNS_ENABLED_RR_TYPES

This setting holds a list of enabled resource record types for PowerDNS Manager. By default, it contains all the record types PowerDNS supports. Enable what you need. The order of the list items defines the order that the sections of the record change forms appear in the administration interface. Example:

PDNS_ENABLED_RR_TYPES = [
    'SOA',
    'NS',
    'MX',
    'A',
    'AAAA',
    'CNAME',
    'PTR',
    'TXT',
    'SPF',
    'SRV',
    'CERT',
    'DNSKEY',
    'DS',
    'KEY',
    'NSEC',
    'RRSIG',
    'HINFO',
    'LOC',
    'NAPTR',
    'RP',
    'AFSDB',
    'SSHFP',
]

PDNS_DEFAULT_ZONE_TYPE

Sets the zone type that will be set as default in zone type selector box in the zone edit form. By default, this is set to NATIVE. Example:

PDNS_DEFAULT_ZONE_TYPE = 'MASTER'

PDNS_DEFAULT_RR_TTL

Each resource record has Time-To-Live (TTL) information, which can be set by the user. In case the user does not provide this information, the minimum TTL setting is retrieved from the SOA record. If a SOA record does not exist, then the value of PDNS_DEFAULT_RR_TTL is used. By default, this is set to 86400 seconds. Example:

PDNS_DEFAULT_RR_TTL = 3600

PDNS_IS_SLAVE

Can be True or False. Currently has not effect.

PDNS_ALLOW_WILDCARD_NAMES

Can be True or False. Turns wildcard support on and off respectively. This setting affects input validation in the name and content fields of those resource records that support wildcards.