Startup

The simplest way to run single instance of Knot Resolver is to use provided Knot Resolver’s Systemd integration:

$ sudo systemctl start kresd@1.service

See logs and status of running instance with systemctl status kresd@1.service command. For more information about Systemd integration see man kresd.systemd.

Warning

kresd@*.service is not enabled by default, thus Knot Resolver won’t start automatically after reboot. To start and enable service in one command use systemctl enable --now kresd@1.service

First DNS query

After installation and first startup, Knot Resolver’s default configuration accepts queries on loopback interface. This allows you to test that the installation and service startup were successful before continuing with configuration.

For instance, you can use DNS lookup utility kdig to send DNS queries. The kdig command is provided by following packages:

Distribution	package with kdig
Arch	knot
CentOS	knot-utils
Debian	knot-dnsutils
Fedora	knot-utils
OpenSUSE	knot-utils
Ubuntu	knot-dnsutils

The following query should return list of Root Name Servers:

$ kdig +short @localhost . NS
a.root-servers.net.
...
m.root-servers.net.