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Making dnscrypt-proxy and Docker play well together

2020-08-03 17:16

This post is available in Russian here.

here

DNSCrypt is a fairly popular way of protecting DNS traffic that is usually left unencrypted from other people. dnscrypt-proxy, a client program that implements DNSCrypt, also supports the DNS-over-HTTPS protocol, allowing name resolution over DoH.

dnscrypt-proxy

Unfortunately, leaving dnscrypt-proxy with its default settings while setting it as the default resolver breaks name resolution in Docker containers. Fixing this while not exposing a DNS resolver on the LAN is what's described below.

This post in short:

1. Create a dummy adapter, assign a private network IP to it.

2. Make dnscrypt-proxy listen on this interface, change system DNS settings accordingly.

The problem

Docker sets up DNS in containers by copying host DNS settings, reusing `/etc/resolv.conf` from the host.

copying host DNS settings

dnscrypt-proxy and other custom resolvers usually bind to `127.0.0.1:53`; the corresponding `/etc/resolv.conf` entry is `nameserver 127.0.0.1`. This setting is propagated to the containers, but, as the containers belong to a different network namespace, host's `127.0.0.1` and container's mean two different things.

The fix

The easiest solution is to run dnscrypt-proxy on host's public IP address and then add this address to `/etc/resolv.conf`. This means we expose a DNS resolver to the network, and we'd rather not.

Instead we'll create a `dummy` network adapter that is routable yet doesn't actually send any packets; it is routable from the container since Docker containers use the host machine as their default gateway.

Creating the adapter

If `dummy` kernel module is not loaded yet (`% lsmod | grep dummy` displays nothing), load it and enable its autostart:

# modprobe dummy
# echo "dummy" >> /etc/modules-load.d/net_dummy.conf

Creating and setting up a dummy adapter is as simple as running these two commands on any modern Linux system with iproute2 installed:

# ip link add type dummy name dummy0
# ip addr add dev dummy0 10.0.197.1/24

Making this permanent will vary between network configuration software. With systemd-networkd you'll need two config files:

`/etc/systemd/network/50-dummy0.netdev`:

[NetDev]
Name=dummy0
Kind=dummy
Description=Dummy network for dnscrypt-proxy

`/etc/systemd/network/50-dummy0.network`:

[Match]
Name=dummy0

[Network]
DHCP=no
Address=10.0.197.1/24
DefaultRouteOnDevice=false

Changing DNS settings

To bind dnscrypt-proxy to a new address, edit `listen_addresses` in `/etc/dnscrypt-proxy/dnscrypt-proxy.toml` and make it look like this:

listen_addresses = ['127.0.0.1:53', '[::1]:53', '10.0.197.1:53']

Restart dnscrypt-proxy and then replace the text in `/etc/resolv.conf` (or wherever your network configurator stores DNS settings) with this:

nameserver 10.0.197.1

Checking

Run a new container:

% docker run -it --rm alpine:3.12
# cat /etc/resolv.conf
nameserver 10.0.197.1
# ping -c 1 ya.ru

Additional info

If you use a firewall (and you should be), then allow incoming traffic to `10.0.197.1:53` from the subnets Docker uses for containers.

If you use systemd-resolved as your caching resolver of choice with dnscrypt-proxy set as its upstream, then you're still fine even though systemd-resolved won't allow you to listen on anything besides `127.0.0.53`: Docker detects the use of systemd-resolved and copies `/run/systemd/resolve/resolv.conf`, which is generated from resolved settings, instead of using `/etc/resolv.conf`.

Docker detects the use of systemd-resolved