Discuss mailing list

[Jonah Aragon <jonah AT triplebit.net>]

Well, been trying this out a bunch more and it does seem to be working great. 
The extension (debug and Chrome Store versions) works fine on computers that 
let me load unpacked extensions, so I didn’t really need to do any debugging. 
It doesn’t work on any of the Chromebooks I’ve tried out here, but I also 
wasn’t able to install the debug version to find out why because Developer 
Tools were disabled. Some sort of policy must be getting in the way, but I’m 
not sure what since all the API endpoints are accessible if I just visit them 
directly in the browser. Ah well, I’ll investigate further if I have time, 
but I would still definitely recommend this extension at the moment. 

“Blockchain-DNS” now strikes me as an inadequate name now that you’ve decided 
to expand to other alternative roots. Not really an issue, just a thought I 
had. 

What Tier 2 servers do your servers query to resolve OpenNIC domains? Or is 
each server its own resolver directly from the root?

Jonah

> On Oct 24, 2017, at 8:34 PM, "astanze AT blockchain-dns.info" 
> <astanze AT blockchain-dns.info> wrote:
> 
> 23.10.2017, 15:08, "Jonah Aragon" <jonah AT triplebit.net>:
>> Hello!
>> 
>> First off, thanks a lot for adding support for our DNS system, your plugin 
>> looks like a great simple solution to access sites like these and I’m 
>> happy about the work you do. 
>> 
>> I’ll have to test your plugin a bit more myself, and I was hoping to hear 
>> from some other community members who had used it. Didn’t see much in the 
>> last email thread about this. 
>> 
>> I had briefly tested the plugin on a corporate machine of mine without 
>> success. It could just be that whatever methods you’re using were blocked 
>> on that computer or it couldn’t access your servers, but I was somewhat 
>> disappointed because that was the first clear use-case I thought of. The 
>> plugin makes the most sense if you otherwise aren’t able to change your 
>> DNS records, so I’d like to discover more limitations like that before 
>> suggesting it as a clear suggestion or alternative. 
> There should not be any special requirements besides allowing normal HTTPS 
> traffic. 
> 
> I am very interested in the details, if it still fails for you. I have 
> built in very verbose logging into BDNS code on GitHub (Mozilla asked to 
> remove log calls for their release versions and I've done that for Chrome 
> too). I would appreciate it if you can load the debug version into your 
> browser and share the log it produces. 
> 
> For Firefox, this is done by going to Addons page (Ctrl+Shift+A), clicking 
> the cog icon, choosing Debug Addons, checking Enable Debugging flag, 
> clicking Load Temporary Addon and choosing an xpi file (it can be 
> unsigned). To open logs, press Ctrl+Shift+J. The addon will be 
> automatically removed once you exit Firefox.
> 
> For Chrome, this is done by going to Extensions page (from More Tools 
> submenu), checking Developer Mode, clicking Load Unpacked Extension and 
> choosing a folder where extension files are (manifest, etc.). To open logs, 
> click on the "background page" link under the extension (in the list of 
> extensions). The addon will be again automatically removed once you exit 
> Chrome.
> 
> Unless you're willing to manually package the files from GitHub, you can 
> use these premade archives (remember to extract the zip for Chrome, it 
> won't accept it zipped): 
> 
> https://blockchain-dns.info/files/debug-firefox.xpi
> https://blockchain-dns.info/files/debug-chrome.zip
> 
> Thanks in advance. Sadly, bug reports are very scarce at the moment (the 
> growing number of users suggests that it works but...).
> 
>> I’ll be sure to give it a try on some other systems without restrictions 
>> like that to test it out. And I hope other members here will give it a try 
>> and report back. 
>> 
>> Do you operate every server personally?
> Yes, I have a couple of Ansible rules to manage them. 
> 
> One of the list members has asked me about the details (without writing to 
> the list), I'm sending them in case somebody is interested in how this 
> works server-side:
> 
> -------- Begin forwarded message -------- 
> Every server is fully independent.
> 
> Each runs an instance of HAProxy, Namecoin Core and Emercoin Core (any of 
> the latter two can be omitted).
> 
> HAProxy acts both as an application server and as a balancer.
> 
> N/E TLDs are served by a Lua module loaded into HAProxy. Ideally, the 
> module queries local N/E Core via their JSON API (same as of Bitcoin Core). 
> If that fails, the module falls back to querying OpenNIC servers over TCP 
> (those which support N/E TLDs such as the two Fusl's anycasts) acting as a 
> web HTTP<->DNS proxy.
> 
> OpenNIC TLDs are, of course, always served by querying OpenNIC.
> 
> Results are cached for 10 minutes by Lua.
> 
> The whole setup can be arranged in less than 5 minutes on Ubuntu 16.04 if 
> you don't want Namecoin Core (they don't provide binary packages, sadly). 
> There are no dependencies other than these 3.
> 
> There is a close project - https://peername.com - but 1) it takes them 7 
> days to propagate changes in the blockchain and 2) they don't respect 
> subdomains (i.e. always treat them as *.foo.bar) due to some limitations of 
> Firefox WebExtension API, and 3) as a result both of their addons are not 
> written very carefully (you need to see the wall of text if you want to 
> understand what I mean; 
> https://github.com/B-DNS/Firefox/blob/master/bdns.js).
> 
> The goal of BDNS is to be a one-stop for alternative DNS roots, primarily 
> Emercoin (as it's the most active decentralized DNS alternative today), and 
> be easy to use. Things like Tor and friGate while great do more than 
> necessary for most people, hence BDNS.
> 
> The resolver's web API, for instance, is as simple as a HTTP/XHR request:
> 
> https://bdns.io/r/opennic.lib
> -------- End forwarded message --------