coredns/man/coredns-dnstap.7

.\" Generated by Mmark Markdown Processer - mmark.miek.nl
.TH "COREDNS-DNSTAP" 7 "October 2026" "CoreDNS" "CoreDNS Plugins"

.SH "NAME"
.PP
\fIdnstap\fP - enables logging to dnstap.

.SH "DESCRIPTION"
.PP
dnstap is a flexible, structured binary log format for DNS software; see https://dnstap.info
\[la]https://dnstap.info\[ra]. With this
plugin you make CoreDNS output dnstap logging.

.PP
Every message is sent to the socket as soon as it comes in, the \fIdnstap\fP plugin has a buffer of
10000 messages, above that number dnstap messages will be dropped (this is logged).

.SH "SYNTAX"
.SS "OUTGOING CONNECTIONS (CONNECT TO SINK)"
.PP
.RS

.nf
dnstap SOCKET [full] [writebuffer] [queue] {
  [identity IDENTITY]
  [version VERSION]
  [extra EXTRA]
  [skipverify]
}

.fi
.RE

.IP \(bu 4
\fBSOCKET\fP is the socket (path) supplied to the dnstap command line tool.
.IP \(bu 4
\fB\fCfull\fR to include the wire-format DNS message.
.IP \(bu 4
\fBwritebuffer\fP sets the TCP write buffer multiplier in MiB. Valid range: [1, 1024].
.IP \(bu 4
\fBqueue\fP sets the queue multiplier, applied to 10,000 messages. Valid range: [1, 4096].
.IP \(bu 4
\fBIDENTITY\fP to override the identity of the server. Defaults to the hostname.
.IP \(bu 4
\fBVERSION\fP to override the version field. Defaults to the CoreDNS version.
.IP \(bu 4
\fBEXTRA\fP to define "extra" field in dnstap payload, metadata
\[la]../metadata/\[ra] replacement available here.
.IP \(bu 4
\fB\fCskipverify\fR to skip tls verification during connection. Default to be secure


.SS "INCOMING CONNECTIONS (ACCEPT FROM SINKS)"
.PP
.RS

.nf
dnstap listen SOCKET [full] {
  [identity IDENTITY]
  [version VERSION]
  [extra EXTRA]
  [tls CERT KEY [CA]]
  [skipverify]
}

.fi
.RE

.IP \(bu 4
\fB\fClisten\fR indicates this is a listening socket that accepts incoming connections from dnstap sinks.
.IP \(bu 4
\fBSOCKET\fP is the socket address to listen on (e.g., \fB\fCtcp://127.0.0.1:6000\fR, \fB\fCunix:///tmp/dnstap.sock\fR).
.IP \(bu 4
\fB\fCfull\fR to include the wire-format DNS message.
.IP \(bu 4
\fBIDENTITY\fP to override the identity of the server. Defaults to the hostname.
.IP \(bu 4
\fBVERSION\fP to override the version field. Defaults to the CoreDNS version.
.IP \(bu 4
\fBEXTRA\fP to define "extra" field in dnstap payload, metadata
\[la]../metadata/\[ra] replacement available here.
.IP \(bu 4
\fB\fCtls CERT KEY [CA]\fR to enable TLS for the listener. \fBCERT\fP and \fBKEY\fP are paths to the server certificate and key files. Optional \fBCA\fP is the path to the CA certificate for client verification.
.IP \(bu 4
\fB\fCskipverify\fR to skip client certificate verification. Default is to verify client certificates. Equivalent to the \fBCA\fP option above being unspecified.


.PP
\fBNote:\fP Incoming connections use unbuffered channels to broadcast events. If a connected sink becomes slow or disconnected, messages are dropped for that sink only, and the connection is closed.

.SH "EXAMPLES"
.PP
Log information about client requests and responses to \fI/tmp/dnstap.sock\fP.

.PP
.RS

.nf
dnstap /tmp/dnstap.sock

.fi
.RE

.PP
Log information about client requests and responses with a custom TCP write buffer (1024 MiB) and queue capacity (2048 x 10000).

.PP
.RS

.nf
dnstap /tmp/dnstap.sock full 1024 2048

.fi
.RE

.PP
Log information including the wire-format DNS message about client requests and responses to \fI/tmp/dnstap.sock\fP.

.PP
.RS

.nf
dnstap unix:///tmp/dnstap.sock full

.fi
.RE

.PP
Log to a remote endpoint.

.PP
.RS

.nf
dnstap tcp://127.0.0.1:6000 full

.fi
.RE

.PP
Log to a remote endpoint by FQDN.

.PP
.RS

.nf
dnstap tcp://example.com:6000 full

.fi
.RE

.PP
Log to a socket, overriding the default identity and version.

.PP
.RS

.nf
dnstap /tmp/dnstap.sock {
  identity my\-dns\-server1
  version MyDNSServer\-1.2.3
}

.fi
.RE

.PP
Log to a socket, customize the "extra" field in dnstap payload. You may use metadata provided by other plugins in the extra field.

.PP
.RS

.nf
forward . 8.8.8.8
metadata
dnstap /tmp/dnstap.sock {
  extra "upstream: {/forward/upstream}"
}

.fi
.RE

.PP
Log to a remote TLS endpoint.

.PP
.RS

.nf
dnstap tls://127.0.0.1:6000 full {
  skipverify
}

.fi
.RE

.PP
Listen for incoming dnstap sink connections on a Unix socket.

.PP
.RS

.nf
dnstap listen /tmp/dnstap.sock full

.fi
.RE

.PP
Listen for incoming dnstap sink connections on TCP.

.PP
.RS

.nf
dnstap listen tcp://127.0.0.1:6000 full

.fi
.RE

.PP
Listen for incoming dnstap sink connections on TLS with mTLS client authentication.

.PP
.RS

.nf
dnstap listen tls://127.0.0.1:6000 full {
  tls /path/to/server\-cert.pem /path/to/server\-key.pem /path/to/ca.pem
}

.fi
.RE

.PP
Listen for incoming dnstap sink connections on TLS without client certificate verification.

.PP
.RS

.nf
dnstap listen tls://127.0.0.1:6000 full {
  tls /path/to/server\-cert.pem /path/to/server\-key.pem
  skipverify
}

.fi
.RE

.PP
You can use \fIdnstap\fP more than once to define multiple taps. The following logs information including the
wire-format DNS message about client requests and responses to \fI/tmp/dnstap.sock\fP,
and also sends client requests and responses without wire-format DNS messages to a remote FQDN.

.PP
.RS

.nf
dnstap /tmp/dnstap.sock full
dnstap tcp://example.com:6000

.fi
.RE

.PP
You can also combine outgoing connections with incoming listeners:

.PP
.RS

.nf
dnstap tcp://remote\-collector.example.com:6000 full
dnstap listen tcp://127.0.0.1:6001 full

.fi
.RE

.SH "COMMAND LINE TOOL"
.PP
Dnstap has a command line tool that can be used to inspect the logging. The tool can be found
at GitHub: https://github.com/dnstap/golang-dnstap
\[la]https://github.com/dnstap/golang-dnstap\[ra]. It's written in Go.

.PP
The following command listens on the given socket and decodes messages to stdout.

.PP
.RS

.nf
$ dnstap \-u /tmp/dnstap.sock

.fi
.RE

.PP
The following command listens on the given socket and saves message payloads to a binary dnstap-format log file.

.PP
.RS

.nf
$ dnstap \-u /tmp/dnstap.sock \-w /tmp/test.dnstap

.fi
.RE

.PP
Listen for dnstap messages on port 6000.

.PP
.RS

.nf
$ dnstap \-l 127.0.0.1:6000

.fi
.RE

.SH "USING DNSTAP IN YOUR PLUGIN"
.PP
In your setup function, collect and store a list of all \fIdnstap\fP plugins loaded in the config:

.PP
.RS

.nf
x :=  \&ExamplePlugin{}

c.OnStartup(func() error {
    if taph := dnsserver.GetConfig(c).Handler("dnstap"); taph != nil {
        for tapPlugin, ok := taph.(*dnstap.Dnstap); ok; tapPlugin, ok = tapPlugin.Next.(*dnstap.Dnstap) {
            x.tapPlugins = append(x.tapPlugins, tapPlugin)
        }
    }
    return nil
})

.fi
.RE

.PP
And then in your plugin:

.PP
.RS

.nf
import (
  "github.com/coredns/coredns/plugin/dnstap/msg"
  "github.com/coredns/coredns/request"

  tap "github.com/dnstap/golang\-dnstap"
)

func (x ExamplePlugin) ServeDNS(ctx context.Context, w dns.ResponseWriter, r *dns.Msg) (int, error) {
    for \_, tapPlugin := range x.tapPlugins {
        q := new(msg.Msg)
        msg.SetQueryTime(q, time.Now())
        msg.SetQueryAddress(q, w.RemoteAddr())
        if tapPlugin.IncludeRawMessage {
            buf, \_ := r.Pack() // r has been seen packed/unpacked before, this should not fail
            q.QueryMessage = buf
        }
        msg.SetType(q, tap.Message\_CLIENT\_QUERY)
        
        // if no metadata interpretation is needed, just send the message
        tapPlugin.TapMessage(q)

        // OR: to interpret the metadata in "extra" field, give more context info
        tapPlugin.TapMessageWithMetadata(ctx, q, request.Request{W: w, Req: query})
    }
    // ...
}

.fi
.RE

.SH "SEE ALSO"
.PP
The website dnstap.info
\[la]https://dnstap.info\[ra] has info on the dnstap protocol. The \fIforward\fP
plugin's \fB\fCdnstap.go\fR uses dnstap to tap messages sent to an upstream.