Installing from a package

Besides the bare binary there are ready-made distribution packages. The package brings everything a service needs on a server: its own system account, a systemd unit with a restart policy, a configuration file with a freshly generated encryption key and a start password for the first login.

Installing

We hand out the packages together with the license (dnseditor-ee_<version>_amd64.deb, …_arm64.deb, dnseditor-ee-<version>-1.x86_64.rpm, …aarch64.rpm); in the pipeline they are the artifact of the package job. Building them yourself works too, see below.

# Debian, Ubuntu and relatives
sudo apt install ./dnseditor-ee_1.0.0_amd64.deb

# RHEL, Fedora, Rocky, SUSE
sudo dnf install ./dnseditor-ee-1.0.0-1.x86_64.rpm

Unlike the Community Edition, the Enterprise Edition does not start yet: without a valid, signed license it refuses to serve. The package says exactly that:

DNS-Editor has been installed.
  Web interface: http://127.0.0.1:8422
  Login:         admin / Rm1vp7oMuw6AIZoWyo9

IMPORTANT: back up the encryption key from /etc/dnseditor-ee/env now.

NOT STARTED YET: the Enterprise Edition needs a signed license.
  1. Put the license file at /etc/dnseditor-ee/license.json
  2. Set DNSE_LICENSE_PUBKEY in /etc/dnseditor-ee/env
  3. systemctl start dnseditor-ee.service
No license yet? Write to info@techeve.de.

The unit is already enabled (systemctl enable) but deliberately not started — starting without a license would end in a restart loop. Once the license file and the public key are in place, systemctl start dnseditor-ee is enough. Details: License.

Caution

Back up the encryption key from /etc/dnseditor-ee/env immediately. Without it every stored provider credential is unusable — a database backup alone cannot bring them back.

What the package installs

Path	Contents
/usr/bin/dnseditor-ee	the binary with the embedded interface
/etc/dnseditor-ee/env	configuration — created once, never overwritten
/etc/dnseditor-ee/env.example	full reference of every variable
/lib/systemd/system/dnseditor-ee.service	unit with Restart=always and hardening
/etc/dnseditor-ee/license.json	where the license file goes (not shipped in the package)
/var/lib/dnseditor-ee	database and state, mode 0750

Plus a system account dnseditor-ee without a login shell. The package declares a conflict with dnseditor (CE) and provides it at the same time — the Enterprise Edition contains the Community Edition, so installing both makes no sense. By default the service listens on 127.0.0.1:8422 only — put a TLS reverse proxy in front for public operation (see Commissioning).

Language of the output

Installer and service speak English by default. When the system language is German, the texts appear in German:

LANG=de_DE.UTF-8 sudo apt install ./dnseditor-ee_1.0.0_amd64.deb

DNS-Editor wurde installiert.
  Oberflaeche:   http://127.0.0.1:8422
  Anmeldung:     admin / 3ce5002cb3a407e7fc70965a

LC_ALL, LC_MESSAGES and LANG are read in that order, then LANGUAGE. C and POSIX count as neutral and stay English.

The German terminal texts deliberately avoid umlauts (“Oberflaeche”, “Schluessel”). Services run under systemd with a neutral locale; real umlauts would regularly show up as question marks or mojibake in the journal, over SSH sessions and in log aggregators. The web interface, the API, e-mails and invoice PDFs are unaffected — they carry proper German.

To make the running service log in German, put the locale into the configuration, because systemd starts services without LANG:

echo 'LANG=de_DE.UTF-8' | sudo tee -a /etc/dnseditor-ee/env
sudo systemctl restart dnseditor-ee

Upgrading and removing

An upgrade replaces the binary and restarts the service; /etc/dnseditor-ee/env is left alone.

sudo apt install ./dnseditor-ee_1.1.0_amd64.deb   # upgrade
sudo apt remove dnseditor-ee                      # stop the service, remove the package

Configuration and database survive even a purge — the env file holds the key without which any backup is worthless. To really get rid of everything, delete /etc/dnseditor-ee and /var/lib/dnseditor-ee by hand.

Building the packages yourself

go install github.com/goreleaser/nfpm/v2/cmd/nfpm@latest
make package        # → dist/packages/*.deb and *.rpm, amd64 + arm64

nfpm needs neither dpkg nor rpmbuild, so it also runs on a Mac and in the CI image. The package definition lives in packaging/.

Next steps

• License — request, verify and renew the license file
• Commissioning — configuration, SSO, self-healing