Abnormal amount of DNS lookups.

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NetNeutron
Posts: 36
Joined: Thu Aug 25, 2016 12:49 pm

Abnormal amount of DNS lookups.

Post by NetNeutron »

  • Linux Distribution and version? Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 6.8 (Santiago)
    32 or 64bit? 64 bit
    VMware Image or Manual Install of XI? Manual Install
    Are there special configurations on your system? No
    Gnome installed? No
    Are you using a proxy? No
    Are you using SSL? No
Our DNS team is seeing 2 million+ DNS requests coming from our NagiosXI server.

I did a packet capture of port 53 and at a quick glance I see alot of AAAA requests and queries for things like
hostname.domain.domain example support.nagios.com.nagios.com

What is NagiosXI doing so many DNS queries ? Why AAAA ? Why double domain ?

G.
scottwilkerson
DevOps Engineer
Posts: 19396
Joined: Tue Nov 15, 2011 3:11 pm
Location: Nagios Enterprises
Contact:

Re: Abnormal amount of DNS lookups.

Post by scottwilkerson »

NetNeutron wrote:Our DNS team is seeing 2 million+ DNS requests coming from our NagiosXI server.
This sounds like a lot, but 2 million in what time frame?

For the domains it is doing the bult of the lookups on, what is the TTL for the requests?

The AAAA requests is the plugins checking for IPv6 records.

depending on the types of checks, some of them do have options to force the type of check, for example, the check_dns plugin, you could force it to only look for A records by adding the -q A flag

Code: Select all

/usr/local/nagios/libexec/check_dns -h
check_dns v2.2.1 (nagios-plugins 2.2.1)
Copyright (c) 1999 Ethan Galstad <nagios@nagios.org>
Copyright (c) 2000-2014 Nagios Plugin Development Team
        <devel@nagios-plugins.org>

This plugin uses the nslookup program to obtain the IP address for the given host/domain query.
An optional DNS server to use may be specified.
If no DNS server is specified, the default server(s) specified in /etc/resolv.conf will be used.


Usage:
check_dns -H host [-s server] [-q type ] [-a expected-address] [-A] [-n] [-t timeout] [-w warn] [-c crit]

Options:
 -h, --help
    Print detailed help screen
 -V, --version
    Print version information
 --extra-opts=[section][@file]
    Read options from an ini file. See
    https://www.nagios-plugins.org/doc/extra-opts.html
    for usage and examples.
 -H, --hostname=HOST
    The name or address you want to query
 -s, --server=HOST
    Optional DNS server you want to use for the lookup
 -q, --querytype=TYPE
    Optional DNS record query type where TYPE =(A, AAAA, SRV, TXT, MX, ANY)
    The default query type is 'A' (IPv4 host entry)
 -a, --expected-address=IP-ADDRESS|HOST
    Optional IP-ADDRESS you expect the DNS server to return. HOST must end with
    a dot (.). This option can be repeated multiple times (Returns OK if any
    value match). If multiple addresses are returned at once, you have to match
    the whole string of addresses separated with commas (sorted alphabetically).
    If you would like to test for the presence of a cname, combine with -n param.
 -A, --expect-authority
    Optionally expect the DNS server to be authoritative for the lookup
 -n, --accept-cname
    Optionally accept cname responses as a valid result to a query
    The default is to ignore cname responses as part of the result
 -w, --warning=seconds
    Return warning if elapsed time exceeds value. Default off
 -c, --critical=seconds
    Return critical if elapsed time exceeds value. Default off
 -t, --timeout=INTEGER:<timeout state>
    Seconds before connection times out (default: 10)
    Optional ":<timeout state>" can be a state integer (0,1,2,3) or a state STRING
Former Nagios employee
Creator:
ahumandesign.com
enneagrams.com
NetNeutron
Posts: 36
Joined: Thu Aug 25, 2016 12:49 pm

Re: Abnormal amount of DNS lookups.

Post by NetNeutron »

Hello Scott,
Its 2mil per day.

I just examined the TTL in the responses and they vary from 9 to 900.

G
scottwilkerson
DevOps Engineer
Posts: 19396
Joined: Tue Nov 15, 2011 3:11 pm
Location: Nagios Enterprises
Contact:

Re: Abnormal amount of DNS lookups.

Post by scottwilkerson »

NetNeutron wrote:Hello Scott,
Its 2mil per day.

I just examined the TTL in the responses and they vary from 9 to 900.

G
As the TTL is in seconds, these are extremely low, and will require a lookup every time a check is performed where a hostname needs to be translated to an IP address. If they do not change frequently, increasing the TTL to a higher timeframe would reduce this dramatically, e.g. 86400 to refresh daily.
Former Nagios employee
Creator:
ahumandesign.com
enneagrams.com
NetNeutron
Posts: 36
Joined: Thu Aug 25, 2016 12:49 pm

Re: Abnormal amount of DNS lookups.

Post by NetNeutron »

Okay I can check into that.
I don't believe we use check_dns at all.

Does NagiosXI lookup AAAA by default setting somewhere ?

G.
scottwilkerson
DevOps Engineer
Posts: 19396
Joined: Tue Nov 15, 2011 3:11 pm
Location: Nagios Enterprises
Contact:

Re: Abnormal amount of DNS lookups.

Post by scottwilkerson »

NetNeutron wrote: Does NagiosXI lookup AAAA by default setting somewhere ?
Everywhere it has to lookup a hostname and convert it to an IP.

If you do not have IPv6 at all on your system, it wouldn't try to do the lookups if IPv6 was disabled on the XI server.
https://serverfault.com/questions/63266 ... aa-lookups
Former Nagios employee
Creator:
ahumandesign.com
enneagrams.com
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