How To Install PowerDNS on CentOS

Introduction

In this Vultr tutorial, you'll learn how to install PowerDNS. PowerDNS is a program for running your own nameservers. It is very useful when combined with Vultr's DDoS protected network. The steps in the tutorial will work on both CentOS 5 and CentOS 6 (on both x64 and i686 variants).

Prerequisites

Install wget if it's not already installed.

yum install wget -y

Installing PowerDNS

Install MySQL and start the service.

yum install mysql mysql-server -y
service mysqld start

Set the MySQL password.

mysqladmin -u root password <your desired password>

Log into your MySQL server and create a database for PowerDNS.

mysql -u root -p 
CREATE DATABASE powerdns;

Create the PowerDNS user.

user powerdns;

Populate the required tables for 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)
-> );

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)
-> );

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
-> );

Exit the MySQL console.

quit;

Install the PowerDNS software (pdns).

yum install pdns pdns-backend-mysql -y

Open the PowerDNS configuration with your favorite text editor.

vi /etc/pdns/pdns.conf

You should see the following section in the configuration file. Update the MySQL password accordingly.

# launch=
launch=gmysql
gmysql-host=127.0.0.1
gmysql-user=root
gmysql-password=<your_mysql_password>
gmysql-dbname=powerdns

Start the PowerDNS service.

service pdns start

Configure both PowerDNS and MySQL to start on boot.

chkconfig --levels 235 mysqld on
chkconfig --levels 235 pdns on

Conclusion

Congratulations, you now have a running PowerDNS server. In order to add, remove, edit, or even move a zone, simply connect to the database and push the required changes. At this point, you are ready to point a domain to your server.