Files

local

Name

local - respond to local names.

Description

local will respond with a basic reply to a "local request". Local requests are defined to be names in the following zones: localhost, 0.in-addr.arpa, 127.in-addr.arpa and 255.in-addr.arpa, any query under .localhost., and, by default for backward compatibility, any query prefixed by localhost.. When seeing one of the non-apex localhost forms a metric counter is increased and if debug is enabled a debug log is emitted.

With local enabled any query falling under these zones will get a reply. This prevents the query from "escaping" to the internet and putting strain on external infrastructure.

The zones are mostly empty, only localhost., names under .localhost., and legacy localhost.<domain> names return loopback address records (A and AAAA), and only 1.0.0.127.in-addr.arpa. has a reverse (PTR) record.

Syntax

local
local {
    localhost_prefix on|off
}

localhost_prefix controls the legacy localhost.<domain> behavior. The default is on for backward compatibility. Set it to off to only treat names under .localhost. as special, which matches RFC 6761. The legacy prefix behavior is deprecated and may be disabled by default in a future release.

Metrics

If monitoring is enabled (via the prometheus plugin) then the following metric is exported:

  • coredns_local_localhost_requests_total{} - a counter of the number of non-apex localhost special-case queries CoreDNS has seen. This includes .localhost. names and, when localhost_prefix is on, legacy localhost.<domain> names. It does not count localhost. queries.

Note that this metric does not have a server label, because it's more interesting to find the client(s) performing these queries than to see which server handled it. You'll need to inspect the debug log to get the client IP address.

Examples

. {
    local
}

Bugs

Only the in-addr.arpa. reverse zone is implemented, ip6.arpa. queries are not intercepted.

See Also

BIND9's configuration in Debian comes with these zones preconfigured. See the debug plugin for enabling debug logging.