Startup

The main way to run Knot Resolver is to use provided integration with systemd.

$ sudo systemctl start knot-resolver.service

See logs and status of running instance with systemctl status knot-resolver.service command. For more information about systemd integration see man knot-resolver.systemd.

Warning

knot-resolver.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 knot-resolver.service

Unfortunately, for some cases (typically Docker and minimalistic systems), systemd is not available, therefore it is not possible to use knot-resolver.service. If you have this problem, look at usage without systemd section.

Note

If for some reason you need to use Knot Resolver as it was before version 6, check out usage without the manager Otherwise, it is recommended to stick to this chapter.

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.