There are notes on installing PowerDNS on a CentOS 5 server. This is generic enough that it aught to work on any RPM based Linux distro with yum installed.

2009-01-20 Update: Fixed the section on local-address in the configuration file which prevented outside machines from accessing the name server.

2010-04-21 Update: Fixed error caught by Matt. Thanks, Matt!

Preliminary Setup

• Ensure BIND is not installed.
  

  
  $ sudo yum erase bind
  

• Create a user to run as.
  

  
  $ sudo useradd -c "PowerDNS" -M -r -s /sbin/nologin pdns
  

• Install MySQL


$ sudo yum install mysql-server
$ sudo /sbin/service mysqld start
$ sudo /sbin/chkconfig --level 35 mysqld on


• Set MySQL root password. Please use different passwords.
  

  
  $ /usr/bin/mysqladmin -u root password 'new password'
  $ /usr/bin/mysqladmin -u root -h localhost password 'new password'

• Run the following MySQL commands. Please change the passwords in the file first.
  

  
  $ mysql --user=root mysql -p
  Enter password:
  mysql> source database-install.sql;

  
  The database-install.sql is something I created. It has the following:

  
  ################################################################################
  #
  # Adjust users.
  #
  # !!! WARNING !!! Change the two passwords below!
  #
  ################################################################################

  # Change the root password here.
  UPDATE mysql.user SET password = PASSWORD('password') WHERE user = 'root';

  # Change the PowerDNS password here.
  CREATE USER 'powerdns'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';

  DROP USER '';

  FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

  ################################################################################
  #
  # Create database and tables.
  #
  ################################################################################
  CREATE DATABASE powerdns;

  USE powerdns;

  CREATE TABLE domains
  (
  id INT AUTO_INCREMENT,
  name VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
  master VARCHAR(128) DEFAULT NULL,
  last_check INT DEFAULT NULL,
  type VARCHAR(6) NOT NULL,
  notified_serial INT DEFAULT NULL,
  account VARCHAR(40) DEFAULT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY (id)
  ) type=InnoDB;

  CREATE UNIQUE INDEX name_index ON domains(name);

  CREATE TABLE records
  (
  id INT AUTO_INCREMENT,
  domain_id INT DEFAULT NULL,
  name VARCHAR(255) DEFAULT NULL,
  type VARCHAR(6) DEFAULT NULL,
  content VARCHAR(255) DEFAULT NULL,
  ttl INT DEFAULT NULL,
  prio INT DEFAULT NULL,
  change_date INT DEFAULT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY(id)
  ) type=InnoDB;

  CREATE INDEX rec_name_index ON records(name);
  CREATE INDEX nametype_index ON records(name,type);
  CREATE INDEX domain_id ON records(domain_id);

  CREATE TABLE supermasters
  (
  ip VARCHAR(25) NOT NULL,
  nameserver VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
  account VARCHAR(40) DEFAULT NULL
  ) type=InnoDB;

  GRANT ALL ON domains TO powerdns;
  GRANT ALL ON records TO powerdns;
  GRANT SELECT ON supermasters TO powerdns;

PowerDNS Setup

• Download PowerDNS RPM.
• Install RPM.
• Change the permissions on the PowerDNS config file since it holds passwords in plain text.
  

  
  sudo chmod 440 /etc/powerdns/pdns.conf

• Edit the PowerDNS config file.
  

  
  sudo vim /etc/powerdns/pdns.conf

• Find the setgid and setuid lines. Add the appropriate lines
  

  
  setgid=pdns
  setuid=pdns

• Find the launch line. Add information for the MySQL database.
  

  
  launch=gmysql
  gmysql-host=localhost
  gmysql-user=powerdns
  gmysql-password=password
  gmysql-dbname=powerdns
  gmysql-socket=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock

• Find the local-address line and add the IP address of the publicly-facing NIC. See Chapter 15 of the documentation.
  

  
  local-address=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

• Find the log-dns-details line and add the following:
  

  
  log-dns-details=off

Testing

• Test the setup by running PowerDNS in monitor mode:
  

  
  $ sudo /etc/init.d/pdns monitor

  Jan 04 22:46:34 This is a standalone pdns
  Jan 04 22:46:34 UDP server bound to 127.0.0.1:53
  Jan 04 22:46:34 TCP server bound to 127.0.0.1:53
  Jan 04 22:46:34 PowerDNS 2.9.21.2 (C) 2001-2008 PowerDNS.COM BV (Nov 16 2008, 14:07:43, gcc 4.2.3 (Ubuntu 4.2.3-2ubuntu7)) starting up
  Jan 04 22:46:34 PowerDNS comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it according to the terms of the GPL version 2.
  Jan 04 22:46:34 Set effective group id to 105
  Jan 04 22:46:34 Set effective user id to 102
  Jan 04 22:46:34 Creating backend connection for TCP
  Jan 04 22:46:34 gmysql Connection succesful
  Jan 04 22:46:34 About to create 3 backend threads for UDP
  Jan 04 22:46:34 gmysql Connection succesful
  Jan 04 22:46:34 gmysql Connection succesful
  Jan 04 22:46:34 gmysql Connection succesful
  Jan 04 22:46:34 Done launching threads, ready to distribute questions

• If there are problems, see Chapter 4 of the documentation.
• Test the operation. Leave the monitor (previous item) running. Pull up a new shell. Execute the following host command and look for a similar response.
  

  
  $ host www.test.com 127.0.0.1
  Using domain server:
  Name: 127.0.0.1
  Address: 127.0.0.1#53
  Aliases:

  Host www.test.com not found: 2(SERVFAIL)

  
  In the monitor you should see the following message:

  
  Not authoritative for 'www.test.com', sending servfail to 127.0.0.1 (recursion was desired)

• Add some test records to the database:
  

  
  $ mysql --user=root -p
  mysql> source database-test.sql;

  
  That file has the following commands, which I copied from the InterNet:

  
  USE powerdns;

  INSERT INTO domains (name, type) values ('test.com', 'NATIVE');
  INSERT INTO records (domain_id, name, content, type,ttl,prio) VALUES (1,'test.com','localhost ahu@ds9a.nl 1','SOA',86400,NULL);
  INSERT INTO records (domain_id, name, content, type,ttl,prio) VALUES (1,'test.com','dns-us1.powerdns.net','NS',86400,NULL);
  INSERT INTO records (domain_id, name, content, type,ttl,prio) VALUES (1,'test.com','dns-eu1.powerdns.net','NS',86400,NULL);
  INSERT INTO records (domain_id, name, content, type,ttl,prio) VALUES (1,'www.test.com','199.198.197.196','A',120,NULL);
  INSERT INTO records (domain_id, name, content, type,ttl,prio) VALUES (1,'mail.test.com','195.194.193.192','A',120,NULL);
  INSERT INTO records (domain_id, name, content, type,ttl,prio) VALUES (1,'localhost.test.com','127.0.0.1','A',120,NULL);
  INSERT INTO records (domain_id, name, content, type,ttl,prio) VALUES (1,'test.com','mail.test.com','MX',120,25);

• Run the test again:
  

  
  $ host www.test.com 127.0.0.1
  Using domain server:
  Name: 127.0.0.1
  Address: 127.0.0.1#53
  Aliases:

  www.test.com has address 199.198.197.196

• Try another test.
  

  
  $ host -v -t mx www.test.com 127.0.0.1
  Trying "www.test.com"
  Using domain server:
  Name: 127.0.0.1
  Address: 127.0.0.1#53
  Aliases:

  ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 27585
  ;; flags: qr aa rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 0

  ;; QUESTION SECTION:
  ;www.test.com. IN MX

  ;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
  test.com. 86400 IN SOA localhost. ahu.ds9a.nl. 1 10800 3600 604800 3600

  Received 86 bytes from 127.0.0.1#53 in 21 ms

• If you are receiving the following in the monitor:
  

  
  Authoritative empty NO ERROR to 127.0.0.1 for 'www.test.com' (AAAA), other types do exist.

  
  Then you did not put the log-dns-details=off in the configuration file. See the documentation, which says

  As the name implies, this is not an error. It tells you there are questions for a domain which exists in your database, but for which no record of the requested type exists. To get rid of this error, add log-dns-details=off to your configuration.

• Remove the test records.
  

  
  $ mysql --user=root -p
  mysql> USE powerdns;
  mysql> DELETE FROM domains;
  mysql> DELETE FROM records;

• Add pdns to chkconfig and ensure that it’s set to run at boot time. I prefer to use system-config-services, but it’s just a graphical wrapper around chkconfig.
• Start the services as a dæmon and you’re done.
  

  
  $ sudo /etc/init.d/pdns start

1. Setting Up Public Name Servers | James Reuben Knowles Says:
   February 15th, 2009 at 11:47 pm

   [...] This article talks about setting up your own public name server, allowing you to have complete control over DNS for your domains. It will cover the steps I went through to achieve this. Where I encountered difficulty will have greater amounts of detail. The actual installation of a name server is covered in my article Installing PowerDNS. [...]

2. Mike Says:
   May 5th, 2009 at 7:09 pm

   anyluck setting up toplevel domains? I recently joined a vpn network, and i have tried to add a domain like .brd and well it doesn’t see it as a top level domain and refuses to add it.

   any ideas?

3. James Reuben Knowles Says:
   May 5th, 2009 at 7:37 pm

   Hey Mike,

   I’ve not tried to set up a TLD. I think this would be a perfect question for the PowerDNS mailing list. Have you tried the elist yet?

4. Matt Says:
   April 20th, 2010 at 8:36 pm

   Nice article, very useful for a PowerDNS first timer! Worked right away on CentOS 5… Thanks!

   BTW, small error on the line : sudo yum /sbin/service mysqld start (yum?)

   Thanks!
   Matt.

5. James Reuben Knowles Says:
   April 20th, 2010 at 11:03 pm

   Matt,

   Thank you very much for catching that error! I’ve used these notes a couple of times and blew right past it.

   Glad you found it useful, and thanks again for the bug catch.
   James