How to Install PowerDNS on Ubuntu Linux

Why use PowerDNS?

With PowerDNS, you gain complete control over your DNS infrastructure. It offers a scalable solution for managing thousands of records, complete with a modern web interface. Once finished, you’ll have a professional DNS management system accessible right from your browser.

Install the MariaDB database server

We’ll start by installing MariaDB, a database that securely stores all your DNS records for PowerDNS.

Once MariaDB is installed, open your terminal and connect to the database:

sudo mysql

Run these commands to create your database and user:

CREATE DATABASE pdns;
CREATE USER 'pdnsadmin'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'your_secure_password';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON pdns.* TO 'pdnsadmin'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;

Install PowerDNS

Now it’s time to install PowerDNS on your Ubuntu system, which will handle your DNS requests.

sudo resolvectl dns eth0 8.8.8.8
sudo sed -i 's/#DNS=/DNS=8.8.8.8/' /etc/systemd/resolved.conf
sudo systemctl restart systemd-resolved

Now, let’s move on to installing PowerDNS. First, we need to handle the system resolver.

sudo apt update
sudo apt install pdns-server pdns-backend-mysql

Import the database structure:

sudo mysql -u pdnsadmin -p pdns < /usr/share/pdns-backend-mysql/schema/schema.mysql.sql

Configure PowerDNS

Edit the configuration file to connect it to your database. You’ll need to add your database details here:

sudo nano /etc/powerdns/pdns.d/pdns.local.gmysql.conf

launch+=gmysql
gmysql-host=127.0.0.1
gmysql-user=pdnsadmin
gmysql-password=your_secure_password
gmysql-dbname=pdns

Install the PowerDNS Admin web application

Next, we’ll install the PowerDNS Admin web application to make managing your PowerDNS settings simple.

sudo apt install python3-venv python3-pip gunicorn nginx certbot python3-certbot-nginx

Set up the application folder and virtual environment:

sudo git clone https://github.com/ngoduykhanh/PowerDNS-Admin.git /var/www/html/pdns
cd /var/www/html/pdns
python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

Run database migrations to prepare the app:

export FLASK_APP=powerdnsadmin/__init__.py
flask db upgrade

Configure PowerDNS and Nginx

Enable the API in /etc/powerdns/pdns.conf by adding:

api=yes
api-key=generate_a_very_long_random_string_here

Restart PowerDNS: sudo systemctl restart pdns

Configure Nginx to serve the site and secure it with HTTPS:

sudo certbot --nginx -d yourdomain.com

Start the Service

We need to set up the PowerDNS Admin application to run smoothly in the background as a service.

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable --now pdnsadmin

Open your browser to your domain name, log in, and enter the API key you generated earlier to finish the setup.

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