A self-hosted DNS server for homelab use, written in Gleam.
armadillo.showcase.mp4
Configure it once on your router as the DNS resolver and every device on the network resolves your local domains automatically.
How it works
When a DNS query arrives, the server checks its local record store first. If a matching record exists, it responds immediately with the configured IP. If no record matches, the query is forwarded to a configurable upstream resolver, the response is cached by TTL, and returned to the client.
Local records are stored in a DNS zone file and loaded into ETS on startup. All query resolution at runtime goes through ETS only, the zone file is never read during query handling.
Container image
Available at ghcr.io/vshakitskiy/armadillo:latest.
| Variable | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
DNS_PORT |
53 |
Port the DNS server listens on |
DNS_UPSTREAM |
8.8.8.8 |
Upstream resolver for unknown domains |
DNS_TTL |
300 |
Default TTL for zone records in seconds |
DNS_SOA_MINIMUM |
3600 |
SOA minimum TTL for negative caching in seconds |
API_PORT |
3000 |
Port for the web UI and REST API |
API_SECRET_KEY_BASE |
random key | Secret used to sign session cookies |
ZONE_FILE |
/data/local.zone |
Path to the DNS zone file |
Mount a volume to /data to persist the zone file across restarts. The zone
file is created automatically if it does not exist.
Deployment guides
Deployment guides can be found in the examples/ directory.
- Podman — systemd service via Podman Quadlet with Caddy as a reverse proxy.
Domain naming
The server accepts any domain string. That said, avoid .local. It is reserved
for mDNS/Bonjour (RFC 6762) and Apple devices will not send .local queries to
a unicast DNS server. .lan or .internal are common alternatives.
Contributing
I will be glad to receive any contributions and feedbacks. Issues or pull requests are welcomed!
The project has three packages: server runs the DNS resolver and HTTP API,
client is the web UI, and shared contains modules used by both. Each package
is developed independently, run gleam run in server/ and
gleam run -m lustre/dev in client/.
For managing environment variables locally during development, direnv is recommended.
To bind to port 53 locally without sudo, run setcap on the BEAM binary:
# Find the binary: $(which erl) -noshell -eval 'io:format("~s~n",[os:find_executable("beam.smp")]),halt().' # > /path/to/beam.smp sudo setcap cap_net_bind_service=+ep /path/to/beam.smp
Resolving with VPN
Personal notes for if I run into DNS issues with a VPN again.
When running a VPN like vless in proxy or tun mode, it's very important to make
sure the VPN resolves domains via the correct DNS. Asuming the router's IP
192.168.1.1 is where the DNS server is configured:
- Add the router as a DNS server and route LAN IPs directly for xray:
- Tag the local DNS server and route private IPs through it for sing-box: