rDNS

Welcome to rdns, the artisanal, hand-crafted, free-range DNS resolver you never knew you needed. Because relying on your ISP's DNS is so 2005.

What is this? 🤔

rdns is a blazing fast (mostly because it aggressively caches things) DNS forwarder written in Rust. It sits between you and the internet, quietly judging your requests and occasionally saying "Nope" if you try to visit something on the blocklist.

It's like a bouncer for your internet traffic, but written in Rust so it's memory safe while it rejects you.

Features ✨

• Caching that actually works: We remember where google.com is so you don't have to ask every 5 milliseconds.
• Blocklisting: We download a list of "bad" domains and pretend they don't exist. It's not censorship, it's curated browsing.
• Metrics: We expose Prometheus metrics because if you can't graph your DNS latency, are you even an engineer?
• TUI (Terminal User Interface): Look like a hacker from a 90s movie while monitoring your DNS traffic. Matrix rain not included (yet).
• Written in Rust: So you can tell your friends you're running "blazingly fast" software.

Usage 🚀

1. Build it:

   cargo build --release

   (Go grab a coffee, it's Rust, it compiles... eventually.)

2. Run it:

   sudo ./target/release/rdns

   Note: Sudo is needed because we bind to port 53 by default. We promise not to rm -rf / (unless you ask nicely).

   Advanced Options: Want to listen on a non-privileged port or use a different upstream resolver? We got you.

   ./target/release/rdns --port 5353 --resolver 8.8.8.8:53

   Headless Mode: Don't need the fancy TUI? Run it in headless mode:

   sudo ./target/release/rdns --no-tui

3. Point your DNS to it: Change your computer's DNS settings to 127.0.0.1. Warning: If you break your internet, don't call us. We're probably debugging a borrow checker error.

Nix ❄️

For those who have ascended beyond mere package managers, rdns is a flake.

• Run it without installing anything:

  nix run github:vinayakankugoyal/rdns

• Install it:

  nix profile install github:vinayakankugoyal/rdns

• Pin an official release:

  nix run github:vinayakankugoyal/rdns/v0.1.0

• Hack on it:

  nix develop   # cargo, rustc, rustfmt, clippy, rust-analyzer — all there

Releases 📦

Official versions are cut by tagging. CI builds the flake for Linux (x86_64/aarch64) and macOS (aarch64) and publishes the binaries as a GitHub release.

1. Bump version in Cargo.toml (and commit it).
2. Tag and push:

   git tag v0.2.0
   git push origin v0.2.0

3. That's it. The release workflow refuses to build if the tag doesn't match Cargo.toml, so you can't ship a version-number lie even if you try.

The "I just want to see the pretty colors" Mode 🎨

Run the binary and marvel at the TUI. It shows logs, blocklist stats, and other things that make you feel like you're controlling the matrix.

Contributing 🤝

Found a bug? Want to add a feature? PRs are welcome! Just make sure cargo fmt doesn't yell at you.

License 📜

This project is licensed under the MIT License. Because we believe in freedom, and also because we don't want to be liable for anything.