I’ve wanted to install pihole so I can access my machines via DNS, currently I have names for my machines in my /etc/hosts files across some of my machines, but that means that I have to copy the configuration to each machine independently which is not ideal.
I’ve seen some popular options for top-level domain in local environments are *.box or *.local.
I would like to use something more original and just wanted to know what you guys use to give me some ideas.
RFC 6762 defines the TLDs you can use safely in a local-only context:
*.intranet
*.internal
*.private
*.corp
*.home
*.lanBe a selfhosting rebel, but stick to the RFCs!
How do you get https on those though? A lot of random stuff requires https these days.
https is not a problem. But you’ll need an internal CA and distributed its certificate to your hosts’ trust store.
do not use
.local, as tempting as it may beuse
.homepersonally“.home.arpa” for A records.
I run my own CA and DNS, and can create vanity TLDs like: a.git, a.webmail, b.sync, etc for internal services. These are CNAMEs pointing to A records.
Being a bit of a rebel myself. I use ONLY a tld, and where subdomains would be used, I use domain.tld
This has lead me to discover quite a few projects out there that don’t parse domain names correctly, especially when you want to use an email like admin@tld and it cries because you have no dot.
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-chapin-rfc2606bis-00
I use .host because .internal is too long to type and .local is a pita, but mostly because the browser actually tries to go there instead of some stupid search engine that tracks that kind of info and I don’t have to remember to put a slash at the end.
I use .lan as it’s shorter and IMO nicer looking than .local
I had problems with .local because it’s used for MDNS and too lazy to figure out how that works so now I just use lan but I also own a .com domain so I have started to use that more
maybe not directly answer for you, but I just literally bought 4 domains for 3 euro per year (renews at the same price!) 5 minutes ago :D.
The catch - it has to be 9 numbers.xyz (see https://gen.xyz/1111b for details).
I own lastname.me and lastname.dev and everything public is lastname.me and everything local ist lastname.dev. I don’t have a VPS anymore so the .me domain is a bit useless and only relevant for emails these days but I’d have something like nc.lastname.me for my public next cloud instance and docs.lastname.dev for my paperless instance that I don’t want to have on somebody else’s machine.
Why use a different domain for local as external?
I read the answers and I am wondering if I should change what I do.
I use the exact same domains and sundomains internally and externally. I simply have a DNS internally that will answer requests with local IP.
So I don’t have to address my machines with a different name when I am outside or inside.
Can someone explain to me what I missed ?
I do this too. I don’t think it’s bad. Sometimes you can have weird issues. Only time I remember weirdness is I had wildcard enabled on public DNS. So if a local DNS wasn’t available it would always resolve to the public IP. Can be confusing.
I don’t self host much of anything in everyday life, but when I’m working on a LAN related project I always use .local. Android now supports MDNS, so I use it pretty much everywhere.
Not sure this is what you want but I have a .one domain setup with local IPs.
So if one server is on 192.168.1.8 I point the domain to that and by visiting https://myserver.whatever.one I get to that server.dot lan. I don’t need let’sencrypt. I just ceeate my own CA, my own (wildcard) certificates, and install the CA into all my boxes that I want or need to have certificate verification succeeding.
Managed to buy a really sweet domain so using that for both mail and local domain
currently I have names for my machines in my /etc/hosts files across some of my machines
A better way is to set the DHCP server to resolve local too via DNS.
So in my case proxmox.mydomain.com and proxmox both resolve to a local IP…without any need to configure IPs manually anywhere.
On opnsense it’s under Unbound >> Register DHCP Leases
Get a real domain. Then you can use external stuff tonight you want.