offtopic - dnsmasq tutorial or guide book?

[Greg_E]

This has nothing to do with OPNsense, but I'm guessing I'll find good help here.

I'm looking for something a little more "conversational" than the man page for dnsmasq, and specifically on Debian 13 if the OS matters.

I recently bought a cheap NVR device, they have all kind of drivers for Windows, but I want to run Frigate with is really linux (in a docker container). This thing has 2 gigabit ethernet phy that they run into two separate switch chips to yield two pairs of 8x100mb ports, these also have POE up to 120 watts per 8 ports. Obviously I'm going to need a DHCP server and really should have DNS server running for those 16 ports.

I have a rough idea of what I think I need to do, but would like to find a nice guide to all the features that dnsmasq can provide, one that is easier to read than the man pages and gives a little better explanation.

If you want to see the device in question, here is a thread, it was cheap enough on ebay to give it a try (since I had ram and drives):
https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/nexcom-nvis-14162-nvr-device.54703/

I think I can just assign IPs to both of those gigabit interfaces, putting them on the same lan, then bind dnsmasq to both of those interfaces to serve up IP and DNS to all 16 of those ports. The actual syntax is in question, but I think I might have a starting point. I might need to form a bridge between them, not really sure yet.

And a question... Why has no one ever built a GUI for dnsmasq, Bind, Kea, etc. And yes, I know, real admins don't use GUIs. Been told that a few times.

[Monviech (Cedrik)]

Well opnsense has a GUI for dnsmasq that will configure most standard and some advanced features.

Take a look at that it generates as /usr/local/etc/dnsmasq.conf

I had to do quite some thinking to translate a few things from man page to configuration. :)

[nero355]

Why has no one ever built a GUI for dnsmasq, Bind, Kea, etc.

Pi-Hole expanded DNSMasqd with a lot of features and calls it FTLDNS and you can do EVERYTHING you need to do via their webGUI ;)

One of the alternatives could be to install something like WebAdmin and see if their plug-ins/add-ons feature has something for any kind of DHCP Service like they have/had for OpenVPN for example.

And yes, I know, real admins don't use GUIs. Been told that a few times.

Not necessarily the truth : Sometimes you need the overview of a nice webGUI ;)

And very expensive devices like the ones from https://www.f5.com/ or https://www.fortinet.com/ use it all the time as their primary administration interface.

[Greg_E]

The webmin module was orphaned about two years ago. Might still work and might still be a decent idea.

Sadly, if this was Windows server I would have had this done by now, so much easier with the gui provided.