Setting A Mini DNS Service For Your Home Wikidot Network

What it is about

  • You want to have some wikidot installation just for you and your home (or office) network users?
  • You don't have a global domain name, you want to point to you your wiki network?

Solution: set up a DNS service that resolves any given name in a domain to server that runs Wikidot at your home.

What software to use

We decided to use dnsmasq, because it is extremely small and just fits to your needs.

How to install

If you run Debian or Ubuntu (and have a Wikidot installation just like described here) all you need to do to install the server is:

apt-get install dnsmasq

Configuration time: server

You need to edit /etc/dnsmasq.conf file to look like this:

no-resolv
address=/wiki.home/127.0.0.1
address=/.wiki.home/127.0.0.1

where wiki.home is a (non-existing) domain for your Wikidot installation (just like the one set in URL_DOMAIN in GlobalProperties.php).

Now use should start or restart your dnsmasq server:

/etc/init.d/dnsmasq start # start
/etc/init.d/dnsmasq restart # restart

Configuration time: clients

You need to tell computers in your home (or office) to use the newly created DNS server. You can do it either manually:

  • locate /etc/resolv.conf and add at THE VERY TOP:
nameserver 192.168.0.1

OR if you use DHCP in your network, configure it to send 192.168.0.1 as the FIRST DNS server (in addition to what you send now) with the DHCP lease to every client.

In both cases, you should replace 192.168.0.1 with the IP address of your Wikidot installation IP.

End notes

Please check and feel free to edit this document.

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