dnsseeder/README.md

dnsseeder

Go Language dns seeder for Networks that use Bitcoin technology such as the Twister P2P network

It is based on the original twister-seeder https://github.com/miguelfreitas/twister-seeder

This codebase can now seed different networks. At the moment it supports Twister and Bitcoin networks. These are configured in network.go and selected at runtime with -net command line option.

Also see the associated utility to display information about non-standard ip addresses

Installing

Simply use go get to download the code:

$ go get github.com/gombadi/dnsseeder

Dependencies are handled by the Go vendor directory. Note: This means the codebase requires Go 1.5 or higher and use of GO15VENDOREXPERIMENT=1

There seem to be some issues with using go get so a process that works for me on Unix based systems is -

cd ${HOME}
mkdir -p go/src/github.com/gombadi
cd go/src/github.com/gombadi
git clone the repo into this directory
cd dnsseeder
go install

The binary will then be available in ${HOME}/go/bin

Usage

$ dnsseeder -h <domain respond to> -net <network to seed>

An easy way to run the program is with tmux or screen. This enables you to log out and leave the program running.

If you want to be able to view the web interface then add -w port for the web server to listen on. If this is not provided then no web interface will be available. With the web site running you can then access the site by http://localhost:port/statusCG

NOTE - For security reasons the web server will only listen on localhost so you will need to either use an ssh tunnel or proxy requests via a web server like Nginx or Apache.

Command line Options:
-h hostname to serve 
-net The network to seed. Currently twister, bitcoin, bitcoin-test
-p port to listen on for DNS requests
-d Produce debug output
-v Produce verbose output
-w Port to listen on for Web Interface

An easy way to run the program is with the following script. Change to suit your system.

#!/bin/bash

LOGDIR=${HOME}/goseederlogs/

mkdir -p ${LOGDIR}

gzip ${LOGDIR}/*.log

# pass through the logging level needed
if [ -z ${1} ]; then
        THENET="twister"
else
        THENET="${1}"
fi

cd
echo
echo "======= Run the Go Language dnsseed ======="
echo
${HOME}/go/bin/dnsseeder -h <host.to.serve> -p <dns.port.to.listen.on> ${THENET -v} -w 8880 2>&1 | tee ${LOGDIR}/$(date +%F-%s)-goseeder.log

RUNNING AS NON-ROOT

Typically, you'll need root privileges to listen to port 53 (name service).

One solution is using an iptables rule (Linux only) to redirect it to a non-privileged port:

$ iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p udp --dport 53 -j REDIRECT --to-port 5353

If properly configured, this will allow you to run dnsseeder in userspace, using the -p 5353 option.

License

For the DNS library license see https://github.com/miekg/dns

For the bitcoin library license see https://github.com/btcsuite/btcd