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<TH>CSV2 5 "January 2007" MARADNS "MaraDNS reference"</TH>
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<h1>NAME</h1>
csv2 - Description of the csv2 zone file that MaraDNS uses
<h1>DESCRIPTION</h1>
The csv2 zone file format is MaraDNS' standard zone file format.
This zone file format uses any kind of whitespace (space, tab, and carriage
return), or the '|' character, to delimit fields.  

<h2>Tilde delimitation</h2>

In newer MaraDNS releases, the tilde ('~') character is used to delimit
records in csv2 zone files; in order to maintain maximum compatibility
with older MaraDNS zone files, this feature is only enabled if a tilde is
placed between the first and second record.  Otherwise, tildes are not
allowed in zone files (except in comments).

<p>

Most older MaraDNS csv2 zone files without the tilde character are
compatible with the updated csv2 parser, unless csv2_tilde_handling
is set to 3.  All older MaraDNS csv2 zone files will parse in MaraDNS 
if csv2_tilde_handling has a value of 0.  Older MaraDNS releases
also supported the csv2_tilde_handling variable (as long as it
had a value of 0); this allowed the same configuration and zone files to
be used in older and newer MaraDNS releases.

<h2>Resource record format</h2>

This zone file format has records in the following form:

<blockquote>
name [+ttl] [rtype] rdata ~
</blockquote>

The name is the name of the record we will add, such as "www.example.net.".
This must be placed at the beginning of a line.
The rtype is the record type for the record, such as "A" (ipv4 IP address),
"MX" (mail exchanger), or "AAAA" (ipv6 IP address).  The ttl is how long
other DNS servers should store this data in their memory (in seconds); 
this field needs a '+' as its initial character.  The rdata is
the actual data for this record; the format for the rdata is type-specific.
<p>

Anything in square brackets is an optional field.  If the ttl is not 
specified, the ttl is set to the default ttl value (see "Default TTL" below).  
If the rtype is not specified, it is set to be an "A" (ipv4 address) record.  
<p>

The zone file supports comments; comments are specified by having a '#' 
anywhere between fields or records; when a '#' is seen, the csv2 parser 
ignores any character it sees (with the exception of the '{', which
is not allowed in comments) until a newline.  A '#' can usually be 
placed inside a field, and indicates the end of a field when placed there.
<p>

A '{' character can never be placed in a comment.  A '~' character is always
allowed in a comment, and has no special meaning when placed in a comment.

<p>

The following record types are supported; a description of the record data
format accommodates the record type:

<h2>A</h2>

An A record stores an ipv4 address.  This is the default record type should
the record type not be specified.  The record type has one field in it:
the IP for the record.  Examples:

<pre>
a.example.net.              10.11.12.13 ~
b.example.net.        A     10.11.12.14 ~
c.example.net. +64000 A     10.11.12.15 ~
</pre>

<h2>PTR</h2>

A PTR record stores the name for a given ipv4 or ipv6 address, and is used 
for reverse DNS lookups.  This record type has one field in it: The name 
for the record in question.  Examples:

<pre>
13.12.11.10.in-addr.arpa.        PTR    a.example.net. ~
14.12.11.10.in-addr.arpa.        PTR    b.example.net. ~
15.12.11.10.in-addr.arpa. +64000 PTR    c.example.net. ~
</pre>

<h2>MX</h2>

A MX record stores a mail exchange record, and is used for mail delivery.
This record type has two fields in it: The priority (or "preference" in
traditional DNS parlance) of the MX record (lower numbers get higher 
priority), and the name of the mail exchanger.  Example of mail
for example.net being mailed to mail.example.net, which has the IP
"10.11.12.16":

<pre>
example.net.      MX   10 mail.example.net. ~
mail.example.net.      10.11.12.16 ~
</pre>

<h2>AAAA</h2>

An AAAA record stores the ipv6 address for a given name.  The IP is
in standard ipv6 "colon delimited" format: eight 16-bit hexadecimal 
numbers are separated by colons.  Two colons together indicate multiple
streams of all-zero hex numbers.  This record has only one field,
the v6 IP. Example:

<pre>
a.example.net.   AAAA    fd4d:6172:6144:4e53:ffe::f ~
</pre>

<h2>SRV</h2>

An SRV record stores a "service" definition.  This record has four
fields: Priority, weight, port, and target.  For more information,
please refer to RFC 2782.  Example:

<pre>
_http._tcp.% SRV 0 0 80 a.% ~
</pre>

<h2>NAPTR</h2>

A NAPTR record is described in RFC 2915.  Example:

<pre>
www.example.com. NAPTR 100 100 's';'http+I2R';'' _http._tcp.example.com. ~ 
</pre>

Note the semicolons.  Because of a bug in MaraDNS 1.4.03 and earlier 
releases, NAPTR records will not parse unless a ~ is <i>not</i> used to
separate records; a patch to fix this bug is available 
<A href=/download/patches/maradns-1.4.03-naptr_parsebug.patch>here</A>.

<h2>NS</h2>

An NS record specifies the name servers for a given zone.  If the name
servers are not delegation name servers (in other words, if the name
servers are the authoritative name servers for the zone), they need to be
at the beginning of the zone, either as the first records in the zone, or
right after the SOA record.  The NS records are optional; if not present,
MaraDNS will make an educated guess of that NS records should be there,
based on the IPs the MaraDNS process is bound to.  This record has one
field:  The name of the name server machine.  Example:

<pre>
example.net.    NS    ns1.example.net. ~
example.net.    NS    ns2.example.net. ~
</pre>

<h2>SOA</h2>

An SOA record stores the start of authority for a given zone file.
This record is optional in a CSV2 zone file; should the record not
be in the zone file, MaraDNS will synthesize an appropriate SOA
record.  This record can only exist once in a zone file: As the first
record of the zone file.  This record has seven fields: The name of
the zone, the email address of the person responsible for the zone,
and five numeric fields (serial, refresh, retry, expire, and minimum).  
Note that the SOA minimum does <i>not</i> affect other TTLs in MaraDNS.
Example:

<pre>
x.org. SOA x.org. email@x.org. 1 7200 3600 604800 1800 ~
</pre>

If there is a '.' (dot) character in the part of the email address before
the '@', it needs to be escaped thusly:

<pre>
x.org. SOA x.org. john\.doe@x.org. 1 7200 3600 604800 1800 ~
</pre>

Note that the csv2 parser will not allow more than one dot in a row;
'john\.\.doe@x.org' will cause a parse error.  In addition, the
dot character must be escaped with a backslash.

<p>

The serial numeric field may be replaced by the string '/serial'; this
string tells the CSV2 zone parser to synthesize a serial number for the
zone based on the timestamp for the zone file.  This allows one to 
have the serial number be automatically updated whenever the zone file is
edited.  Here is how this special field looks in a SOA record:

<pre>
x.org. SOA x.org. email@x.org. /serial 7200 3600 604800 1800 ~
</pre>

The '/serial' string is case-sensitive; only '/serial' in all lower
case will parse.  

<h2>TXT</h2>

A TXT record stores arbitrary text and/or binary data for a given
host name.  This record has one field: The text data for the record.

<p>

A basic text record can be stored by placing ASCII data between two single
quotes, as follows:

<pre>
example.com. TXT 'This is an example text field' ~
</pre>

Any binary data can be specified; see the <b>csv2_txt(5)</b> manual page
for full details.  
<p>

If tildes are used to separate records, a TXT record can not contain a
'|' (pipe) character, a '#' character, nor any ASCII control character;
these characters can be added to a TXT record via the use of escape
sequences; read the csv2_txt man page for details.

<h2>SPF</h2>

A SPF record is, with the exception of the numeric rtype, identical to
a TXT record.  SPF records are designed to make it more difficult to
forge email.  More information about SPF records can be found in 
RFC4408, or by performing a web search for 'sender policy framework'.

<h2>RAW</h2>

The RAW record is a special meta-record that allows any otherwise 
unsupported record type to be stored in a csv2 zone file.  The
syntax is:

<pre>
RAW [numeric rtype] [data] ~
</pre>

The numeric rtype is a decimal number.

<p>

The data field can, among other thing, have backslashed hex sequences 
outside of quotes, concatenated by ASCII data inside quotes, such as
the following example:

<pre>
example.com. RAW 40 \x10\x01\x02'Kitchen sink'\x40' data' ~
</pre>

The above example is a "Kitchen Sink" RR with a "meaning" of 16, a "coding"
of 1, a "subcoding" of 2, and a data string of "Kitchen sink@ data" (since
hex code 40 corresponds to a @ in ASCII).  Note that unquoted hex
sequences are concatenated with quoted ASCII data, and that spaces are
<i>only</i> inside quoted data.

<p>

The format for a data field in a RAW record is almost identical to the
format for a TXT data field.  Both formats are described in full in the
<b>csv2_txt(5)</b> manual page.

<h2>FQDN4</h2>

The FQDN4 (short for "Fully Qualified Domain Name for IPv4") record is
a special form of the "A" record (see above) that instructs MaraDNS
to automatically create the corresponding PTR record.  For example,
the following is one way of setting up the reverse DNS lookup for
x.example.net:

<pre>
x.example.net. A 10.3.28.79 ~
79.28.3.10.in-addr.arpa. PTR x.example.net. ~
</pre>

But the above two lines in a zone file can also be represented thusly:

<pre>
x.example.net. FQDN4 10.3.28.79 ~
</pre>

Note that the csv2 parser does not bother to check that any given IP
only has a single FQDN4 record; it is up to the DNS administrator to
ensure that a given IP has only one FQDN4 record.  In the case of
there being multiple FQDN4 records with the same IP, MaraDNS will
have multiple entries in the corresponding PTR record, which is 
usually not the desired behavior.

<p>

FQDN4 records are not permitted in a csv2_default_zonefile.  If you
do not know what a csv2_default_zonefile is, you do not have to worry 
about this limitation.

<h2>FQDN6</h2>

The FQDN6 (short for "Fully Qualified Domain Name for IPv6") record is
the ipv6 form for the FQDN4 record.  Like the FQDN4 record, this
record creates both a "forward" and "reverse" DNS record for a given 
host name.  For example, onoe may have:

<pre>
x.example.net. AAAA fd4d:6172:6144:4e53::b:c:d ~
d.0.0.0.c.0.0.0.b.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.3.5.e.4.4.4.1.6.2.7.1.6.d.4.d.f PTR 
x.example.net. ~
</pre>

But the above two lines in a zone file can also be represented thusly:

<pre>
x.example.net. FQDN6 fd4d:6172:6144:4e53::b:c:d ~
</pre>

Like FQDN4 records, it is the DNS administrator's duty to make sure
only a single IP has a FQDN6 record. 

<p>

FQDN6 records are, like FQDN4 records, not permitted in a 
csv2_default_zonefile.  If you do not know what a csv2_default_zonefile 
is, you do not have to worry about this limitation.

<p>

FQDN6 records were implemented by Jean-Jacques Sarton.

<h2>CNAME</h2>

A CNAME record is a pointer to another host name.  The CNAME record, in
MaraDNS, affects any record type not already specified for a given host 
name.  While MaraDNS allows CNAME and non-CNAME records to share the
same host name, this is considered bad practice and is not compatible
with some other DNS servers.

<p>

CNAME records are not permitted in a csv2_default_zonefile.  If you
do not know what a csv2_default_zonefile is, this fact is of no 
relevance.

<h1>Historical and uncommon resource records</h1>

The following resource records are mainly of historical interest, or
are not commonly used.

<h2>HINFO</h2>

An HINFO record is a description of the CPU (processor) and OS that
a given host is using.  The format for this record is identical to a
TXT record, except that the field must have precisely two chunks.

<p>

The first chunk of a HINFO record is the CPU the host is running; the
second chunk is the OS the host is running.

<p>

Example:

<pre>
example.com. HINFO 'Intel Pentium III';'CentOS Linux 3.7' ~
</pre>

This resource record is not actively used--the IANA
has a list of CPUs and OSes that this record is supposed to have.  However,
this list has not been updated since 2002.

<h2>WKS</h2>

WKS records are historical records which have been superseded by SRV
records.  The format of the record is an IP, followed by a protocol
number (6 means TCP), followed by a list of ports that a given server
has available for services.

<p>

For example, to advertise that example.net has the IP 10.1.2.3, and has a
SSH, HTTP (web), and NNTP server:

<pre>
example.net. WKS 10.1.2.3 6 22,80,119 ~
</pre>

MaraDNS only allows up to 10 different port numbers in a WKS record,
and requires that the listed port numbers are not be higher than 1023.

<h2>MD and MF</h2>

MD and MF records are RR types that existed before MX records, and were
made obsolete by MX records.  RFC1035 says that a DNS server can either
reject these records or convert these records in to MX records.  BIND
rejects these records; MaraDNS converts them.

<p>

Example:

<pre>
example.net. MD a.example.net. ~
example.net. MF b.example.net. ~
</pre>

Is equivalent to:

<pre>
example.net. MX 0 a.example.net. ~
example.net. MX 10 b.example.net. ~
</pre>

<h2>MB, MG, MINFO, and MR</h2>

In the late 1980s, an alternative to MX records was proposed.  This
alternative utilized MB, MG, MINFO, and MR records.  This alternative
failed to gather popularity.  However, these records were codified in
RFC1035, and are supported by MaraDNS.  Here is what the records look
like:

<pre>
example.net. MB mail.example.net. ~
example.net. MG mg@example.net. ~
example.net. MINFO rm@example.net. re@example.net. ~
example.net. MR mr@example.net. ~
</pre>

More information about these records can be found in RFC1035.

<h2>AFSDB, RP, X25, ISDN, and RT</h2>

AFSDB, RP, X25, ISDN, and RT are resource records which were 
proposed in RFC1183.  None of these resource records are widely
used.

<p>

With the exception of the ISDN record, the format of these records
is identical to the examples in RFC1183.  The format of the ISDN
record is identical unless the record has a subaddress (SA).  If
an ISDN record has a subaddress, it is separated from the ISDN-address
by a ';' instead of whitespace.

<p>

If used, here is how the records would look in a csv2 zone file:

<pre>
example.net. AFSDB 1 afsdb.example.net. ~
example.net. RP rp@example.net. rp.example.net. ~
example.net. RP rp2@example.net. . ~
example.net. X25 311061700956 ~
example.net. ISDN 150862028003217 ~
example.net. ISDN 150862028003217;004 ~
example.net. RT 10 relay.example.net. ~
</pre>

<h2>NSAP and NSAP-PTR</h2>

NSAP and NSAP-PTR records were proposed in RFC1706.  A NSAP record is
a hexadecimal number preceded by the string "0x" and with optional dots
between bytes.  This hexadecimal number is converted in to a binary number
by MaraDNS.  A NSAP-PTR record is identical to a PTR record, but has a 
different RTYPE.

<p>

More information about these records can be obtained from RFC1706.

<p>

If used, here is how the records would look in a csv2 zone file:

<pre>
example.net. NSAP 0x47.0005.80.005a00.0000.0001.e133.ffffff000162.00 ~
example.net. NSAP-PTR nsap.example.net. ~
</pre>

<h2>PX</h2>

The PX RR is an obscure RR described in RFC2163.  A PX record looks like
this in a CSV2 zone file:

<pre>
example.net. PX 15 px1.example.net. px2.example.net. ~
</pre>

<h2>GPOS</h2>

An GPOS record is a description of the location of a given server.
The format for this record is identical to a
TXT record, except that the field must have precisely three chunks.

<p>

The first chunk of a GPOS record is the longitude; the second chunk is
the latitude; the third chunk is the altitude (in meters).

<p>

Example:

<pre>
example.net. GPOS '-98.6502';'19.283';'2134' ~
</pre>

More information about this record can be found in RFC1712.

<p>

This resource record is not actively used; for the relatively few people
who encode their position in DNS, the LOC record is far more common.

<h2>LOC</h2>

The LOC resource record is an uncommonly used resource record that 
describes the position of a given server.  LOC records are described
in RFC1876.  

<p>

Note that MaraDNS' LOC parser assumes that the altitude,
size, horizontal, and vertical precision numbers are always expressed
in meters.  Also note that that sub-meter values for size, horizontal, and 
vertical precision are not allowed.  Additionally, the altitude can not 
be greater than 21374836.47 meters.

<p>

Example:

<pre>
example.net. LOC 19 31 2.123 N 98 3 4 W 2000m 2m 4m 567m ~
</pre>

<h1>SLASH COMMANDS</h1>

In addition to being able to have resource records and comments, csv2
zone files can also have special slash commands.  These slash commands,
with the exception of the '/serial' slash command (see "SOA" above),
can only be placed where the name for a record would be placed.
Like resource records, a tilde is to be placed after the
slash command.  Note also that slash commands are case-sensitive, and 
the command in question must be in all-lower-case.

<p>

These commands are as follows:

<h2>Default TTL</h2>

The default TTL is the TTL for a resource record without a TTL specified.
This can be changed with the '/ttl' slash command.  This command
takes only a single argument: The time, in seconds, for the new default TTL.
The '/ttl' slash command only affects the TTL of records that follow the
command.  A zone file can have multiple '/ttl' slash commands.

<p>

The default TTL is 86400 seconds (one day) until changed by the '/ttl'
slash command.

<p>

In the following example, a.ttl.example.com will have a TTL of 86400 
seconds (as long as the zone file with this record has not previously used
the '/ttl' slash command), b.ttl.example.com and d.ttl.example.com will 
have a TTL of 3600 seconds, c.ttl.example.com will have a TTL of 9600 
seconds, and e.ttl.example.com will have a TTL of 7200 seconds:

<pre>
a.ttl.example.com.       10.0.0.1 ~
/ttl 3600 ~
b.ttl.example.com.       10.0.0.2 ~
c.ttl.example.com. +9600 10.0.0.3 ~
d.ttl.example.com.       10.0.0.4 ~
/ttl 7200 ~
e.ttl.example.com.       10.0.0.5 ~
</pre>

<h2>Origin</h2>

It is possible to change the host name suffix that is used to substitute the
percent in a csv2 zone file.  This suffix is called, for historical and 
compatibility reasons, "origin".  This is done as the slash command
'/origin', taking the new origin as the one argument to this function.
Note that changing the origin does <i>not</i> change the domain suffix
used to determine whether a given domain name is authoritative.

<p>

Here is one example usage of the '/origin' slash command:

<pre>
/origin example.com. ~
www.% 10.1.0.1 ~
% MX 10 mail.% ~
mail.% 10.1.0.2 ~
/origin example.org. ~
www.% 10.2.0.1 ~
% MX 10 mail.% ~
mail.% 10.2.0.2 ~
</pre>

Which is equivalent to:

<pre>
www.example.com. 10.1.0.1 ~
example.com. MX 10 mail.example.com. ~
mail.example.com. 10.1.0.2 ~
www.example.org. 10.2.0.1 ~
example.org. MX 10 mail.example.org. ~
mail.example.org. 10.2.0.2 ~
</pre>

It is also possible to make the current origin be part of the new origin:

<pre>
/origin example.com. ~
% 10.3.2.1 ~ # example.com now has IP 10.3.2.1
/origin mail.% ~
% 10.3.2.2 ~ # mail.example.com now has IP 10.3.2.2
</pre>

<h2>Opush and Opop</h2>

The '/opush' and '/opop' slash commands use a stack to remember and later
recall values for the origin (see origin above).  The '/opush' command
is used just like the '/origin' command; however, the current origin is
placed on a stack instead of discarded.  The '/opop' command removes 
("pops") the top element from this stack and makes the element the origin.

<p>

For example:

<pre>
/origin example.com. ~
/opush mail.% ~ # origin is now mail.example.com; example.com is on stack
a.% 10.4.0.1 ~ # a.mail.example.com has IP 10.4.0.1
/opush web.example.com. ~ # mail.example.com and example.com are on stack
a.% 10.5.0.1 ~ # a.web.example.com has IP 10.5.0.1
b.% 10.5.0.2 ~ # b.web.example.com has IP 10.5.0.2
/opop ~ # origin is now mail.example.com again
b.% 10.4.0.2 ~ # b.mail.example.com has IP 10.4.0.2
/opop ~ # origin is now example.com
% MX 10 a.mail.% ~ # example.com. MX 10 a.mail.example.com.
% MX 20 b.mail.% ~ # example.com. MX 20 b.mail.example.com.
</pre>

The opush/opop stack can have up to seven elements on it.

<h2>Read</h2>

The '/read' slash commands allows one to have the contents of another
file in a zone.  The '/read' command takes a single argument: A filename
that one wishes to read.  The filename is only allowed to have letters, 
numbers, the '-' character, the '_' character, and the '.' character in it.

<p>

The file needs to be in the same directory as the zone file.  The file will
be read with the same privileges as the zone file; content in the file
should come from a trusted source or be controlled by the system 
administrator.

<p>

Let us suppose that we have the following in a zone file:

<pre>
mail.foo.example.com. 10.3.2.1 ~
/read foo ~
foo.example.com. MX 10 mail.foo.example.com. ~
</pre>

And a file foo with the following contents:

<pre>
foo.example.com. 10.1.2.3 ~
foo.example.com. TXT 'Foomatic!' ~
</pre>

Then foo.example.com will have an A record with the value 10.1.2.3, a
TXT value of 'Foomatic!', and a MX record with priority 10 pointing to
mail.foo.example.com.  mail.foo.example.com will have the IP 10.3.2.1.

<p>

Note that no pre-processing nor post-processing of the origin is done
by the '/read' command; should the file read change the origin, this
changed value will affect any records after the '/read' command.  For
example, let us suppose db.example.com looks like this:

<pre>
/origin foo.example.com. ~
% TXT 'Foomatic!' ~
/read foo ~
% MX 10 mail.foo.example.com. ~
</pre>

And the file foo looks like this:

<pre>
% 10.1.2.3 ~
/origin mail.% ~
% 10.3.2.1 ~
</pre>

Then the following records will be created:

<pre>
foo.example.com.      TXT   'Foomatic!' ~
foo.example.com.      A     10.1.2.3 ~
mail.foo.example.com. A     10.3.2.1 ~
mail.foo.example.com. MX 10 mail.foo.example.com. ~
</pre>

To have something that works like '$INCLUDE filename' in a RFC1035
master file, do the following:

<pre>
/opush % ~
/read filename ~
/opop ~
</pre>

Or, for that matter, the equivalent of '$INCLUDE filename neworigin':

<pre>
/opush neworigin. ~
/read filename ~
/opop ~
</pre>

<h1>EXAMPLE ZONE FILE</h1>

<pre>
<include "../examples/example_csv2">
</pre>
<h1>LEGAL DISCLAIMER</h1>
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHORS ''AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS 
OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED 
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE 
ARE DISCLAIMED.  IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE 
LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR 
CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF 
SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR 
BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, 
WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE 
OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, 
EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. 

<h1>AUTHOR</h1>
Sam Trenholme 
<A href=http://www.samiam.org/>http://www.samiam.org/</a>
</BODY>
