Custom DNS - Observations

General Beta 5.0
3

As he categorised this topic as Beta 5, I think @borpin is referring to the Beta 5.0 Custom DNS feature.

I would concur that Custom DNS -as a name- can be improved on.
However, to me, Local Hostnames doesn't quite hit the spot either, as that feature might be used to trap public hostnames and redirect them to a local resource as well (as it is, I currently do that in v4 myself -by appending to /etc/hosts- in order to mock various connectivity checks).

What do you think of Custom Host Records, maybe?

4

Dont have yet :wink:

5

No sorry, I meant this

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Yes

I could live with that.

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This feature was an external contribution which we might have checked more for proper function than for wording. Any suggestions for improvement are welcomed. You can either open a PR and discuss in there or discuss here we we'll make sure to commit the changes once there is agreement reached.

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8

It is a really useful feature, just needs a bit of expanding to explain it.

I think the name suggestion from @Bucking_Horn is a good one although I might go for Local Host Records.

9

Or we could follow the Monty Python approach and name it "the section until recently known as 'Custom DNS'" :grinning:

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Did I hear you say "Ni" ?
RIP Terry.

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11

Just to note, the person responsible for that section has been sacked.

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Have you sacked the persons responsible for the sacking as well ?
Team team team!

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Instead of suggesting any other new wording for the feature, i would like to know a bit more about the functionality itself.
(I can't find any mentioning of this feature in the documentation.)

Recently I edited my /ect/hosts file to see hostnames instead ob IP addresses in the PiHole WebIF.

With the "Custom Host Records" or "Custom DNS" feature i can realize the same?

The existing content of the hosts file is not yet loaded into this table.
So maybe i have to start over wit the naming.
Wouldn't be a problem for me, if i am on the right track now with the functionality.

15

Yes you can :slight_smile:

You can copy&pasting transfer into /etc/pihole/custom.list

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16

OK, thanks.

It's working

17

Love this new feature/functionality adding all my devices under .lan - smooth!

As for the name....I figured it out so "Custom" is OK, possibly "User DNS config", "Local DNS config" or "DNS Override" (assuming this functionality takes priority?)

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18

No, the priority is:

  1. Configured in a config file in /etc/dnsmasq.d/
  2. Read from /etc/hosts
  3. Read from the list containing the device's host name and pi.hole (stored in /etc/pihole/local.list)
  4. Read from the "custom DNS" list (stored in /etc/pihole/custom.list)

Only the first record will trigger an address-to-name association.

19

So how about this? I'd prefer to get this done soon so we can still put it into v5.0. I would really really like to see the release not getting delayed any further. However, for this, we need to absolutely freeze the code so we can do some final testing.

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20

I think it's to close to /etc/hosts. Users likely will not understand the difference between this page and /etc/hosts and wonder if (or why not) this page edits /etc/hosts directly.

I think "Custom DNS configuration" or "Local DNS config" is better

21

"On this page you can add domain/IP associations." Drop off the reference to /etc/hosts.

Edit: And change "List of Custom DNS domains" to "List of Local DNS records."

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25

This is good. We'll put a brief description in the release announcement.

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