The best method is via the response policy zone in Bind 9.8.1 or newer. It allows you to override single records in arbitrary zones (and there's no need to create a whole subdomain for that, only the single record you want to change), it allows you to override CNAMEs, etc. Other solutions such as Unbound cannot override CNAMEs.
https://www.redpill-linpro.com/sysadvent/2015/12/08/dns-rpz.html
EDIT: Let's do this properly then. I will document what I've done based on the tutorial linked above.
My OS is Raspbian 4.4 for Raspberry Pi, but the technique should work without any changes on Debian and Ubuntu, or with minimal changes on other platforms.
Go to where your Bind config files are kept on your system - here it's in /etc/bind
. Create in there a file called db.rpz
with the following contents:
$TTL 60
@ IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. (
2015112501 ; serial
1h ; refresh
30m ; retry
1w ; expiry
30m) ; minimum
IN NS localhost.
localhost A 127.0.0.1
www.some-website.com A 127.0.0.1
www.other-website.com CNAME fake-hostname.com.
What does it do?
- it overrides the IP address for
www.some-website.com
with the fake address 127.0.0.1
, effectively sending all traffic for that site to the loopback address
- it sends traffic for
www.other-website.com
to another site called fake-hostname.com
Anything that could go in a Bind zone file you can use here.
To activate these changes there are a few more steps:
Edit named.conf.local
and add this section:
zone "rpz" {
type master;
file "/etc/bind/db.rpz";
};
The tutorial linked above tells you to add more stuff to zone "rpz" { }
but that's not necessary in simple setups - what I've shown here is the minimum to make it work on your local resolver.
Edit named.conf.options
and somewhere in the options { }
section add the response-policy
option:
options {
// bunch
// of
// stuff
// please
// ignore
response-policy { zone "rpz"; };
}
Now restart Bind:
service bind9 restart
That's it. The nameserver should begin overriding those records now.
If you need to make changes, just edit db.rpz
, then restart Bind again.
Bonus: if you want to log DNS queries to syslog, so you can keep an eye on the proceedings, edit named.conf.local
and make sure there's a logging
section that includes these statements:
logging {
// stuff
// already
// there
channel my_syslog {
syslog daemon;
severity info;
};
category queries { my_syslog; };
};
Restart Bind again and that's it.
Test it on the machine running Bind:
dig @127.0.0.1 www.other-website.com. any
If you run dig on a different machine just use @the-ip-address-of-Bind-server instead of @127.0.0.1
I've used this technique with great success to override the CNAME for a website I was working on, sending it to a new AWS load balancer that I was just testing. A Raspberry Pi was used to run Bind, and the RPi was also configured to function as a WiFi router - so by connecting devices to the SSID running on the RPi I would get the DNS overrides I needed for testing.
This is called Reverse Proxy, you can redirect all trafic on port 80 to one Apache server, configure 3 vhost (1 per subdomain) and in the 2 vhost handling non local website use the Apache ProxyPass directive to tell apache to load content from another server.
nginx can also act as a reverse proxy. You can forward all request to nginx then nginx will load content on one the right server depending of the subdomain.
I would use the Apache proxypass feature, it's easier to setup from my point of view.
You can also start a 4th apache server that will only act as reverse proxy. In this case all of the 3 vhost will use proxypass to get content from the right server.
See http://www.raskas.be/blog/2006/04/21/reverse-proxy-of-virtual-hosts-with-apache-2/ for an example, you case is the same execpt that you have a third subdomain (so you need 1 more vhost).
Best Answer
The solution in the end was to host the e-mail gateway appliance's web server on a different port. This is not ideal, but, since most of the end users who would access it will do so via clicking a link in an e-mail, it's sufficient.
No form of redirect will work with two separate internal servers and only one external IP.