PBR and Local (.lan) DNS

Installing and Using OpenWrt Network and Wireless Configuration
1

I'm running PBR to split network traffic between my ISP and a VPN using wireguard. I have a single device running through wireguard called "box" assigned to a static local IP address so that other devices on the network can reach it at box.lan. In order to accomplish this, I'm using dnsmasq:

# /etc/config/dhcp

config dnsmasq
        option domainneeded '1'
        option localise_queries '1'
        option rebind_protection '1'
        option rebind_localhost '1'
        option local '/lan/'
        option domain 'lan'
        option expandhosts '1'
        option authoritative '1'
        option readethers '1'
        option leasefile '/tmp/dhcp.leases'
        option resolvfile '/tmp/resolv.conf.d/resolv.conf.auto'
        option localservice '1'
        option ednspacket_max '1232'
        list address '/box.lan/192.168.1.XXX'

This works great, except that box is using a different dns provider for/from my VPN:

# /etc/config/dhcp

config host
        option name 'box'
        option mac 'XXXXXXXXXXXXX'
        option ip '192.168.1.XXX'

config mac 'test'
        option mac 'XXXXXXXXXXXXX'
        option networkid 'wireguard'
        list dhcp_option '6,DNS_PROVIDED_BY_VPN'

This makes sense: because box is using another DNS provider and not just pointing to the router, it never hits dnsmasq. Running an nslookup on other devices confirms this: they're pointed to the router and resolve box.lan correctly.

The question is what is the best way to have box itself resolve box.lan to its own IP? Is there something I can do within OpenWRT to accomplish this? Is it better just to handle it with box's own /etc/hosts file? To be clear, everything except this .lan routing is working correctly in terms of DNS resolution. What I want to do is have box resolve box.lan correctly.

Note: box.lan runs a reverse proxy service for web apps that are only accessible on our LAN (ex. Plex)

2

If it is only this single hostname, use the /etc/hosts.

1 Like
3

That makes sense. My issue here is that I'm also using subdomains. If I could specify a wildcard, that would work, but /etc/hosts doesn't support that.

4

If you need more complicated stuff, it would be a solution to run on the box a dnsmasq and split the dns towards the router for .lan and to the tunnel nameserver for the rest.

1 Like