howto/lglass

lglass is a Python software package designed for Internet Registries like the DN42. You can generate zone files for DNS and rDNS IPv4/v6, and handle the registry. It is available on GitHub as free software:

$ git clone git://github.com/fritz0705/lglass.git

Running your own Whois daemon

lglass provides an event-based whois daemon with internal caching, which was written in Python. It is very simple to run an instance:

$ ./bin/lglass-whoisd

without the configfile:

$ ./bin/lglass-regtool whoisd -H $HOST -p $PORT

usage: lglass-whoisd [-h] [-4] [-6] [--host HOST] [--port PORT]
                     [--cidr] [--no-cidr] [--inverse] [--no-inverse]

optional arguments:
    -h, --help            show this help message and exit
    -4                    Listen on IPv4
    -6                    Listen on IPv6
    --host HOST, -H HOST  Listen on host
    --port PORT, -p PORT  Listen on port
    --cidr, -c            Perform CIDR matching on queries
    --no-cidr             Do not perform CIDR matching on queries
    --inverse, -i         Perform inverse matching on queries
    --no-inverse          Do not perform inverse matching on queries

Generate zone files

lglass also provides a script to generate zone files from the registry. It's named zonegen.py and requires a registry dump from Monotone.

To generate DNS zones:

$ ./bin/lglass-zonegen -d $PATH_TO_DATA_DIR -n ns1... -n ns2... -e foo.bar.com dns -z dn42

To generate IPv4 rDNS zones:

$ ./bin/lglass-zonegen -d $PATH_TO_DATA_DIR -n ns1... -n ns2... -e foo.bar.com rdns4 -N 172.22.0.0/16

To generate IPv6 rDNS zones:

$ ./bin/lglass-zonegen -d $PATH_TO_DATA_DIR -n ns1... -n ns2... -e foo.bar.com rdns6 -N fd00::/8

Reformat RPSL files

You can also reformat RPSL files using lglass by using the lglass.rpsl module:

$ ./bin/lglass-rpsl < $DATA/inetnum/172.22.0.53_32

lglass.rpsl also supports in-place operation:

$ ./bin/lglass-rpsl -i $DATA/inetnum/172.22.0.53_32

This opens the file, reads the content into memory, seeks to position 0, writes the formatted object and truncates the file. Simple web interface

lglass also comes with a simple web interface written in Python3 using Bottle and Jinja2. It also provides a binary to run it using wsgiref:

$ ./bin/lglass-web

Furthermore you can use any WSGI server like Gunicorn by using lglass.web.application:app as WSGI callback. You can provide a path to the configuration file in the environment variable LGLASS_WEB_CFG.

Configuration

The configuration file format is JSON and allows configuration of the database chain, the listen parameters, the custom messages and the process management.

Option	Meaning
listen.host	IP address for listening socket (Default: ::)
listen.port	TCP port for listening socket (Default: 4343)
listen.protocol	Protocol for listening socket (4 or 6, by default 6)
database	Array of database URLs to initialize database chain
database.types	Array of object types in database (Default: undefined) Default chain: [ "whois+lglass.database.file+file:.", "whois+lglass.database.cidr+cidr:", "whois+lglass.database.schema+schema:", "whois+lglass.database.cache+cached:" ]
messages.preamble	String preamble for whois responses
messages.help	String help message for help requests
process.user	User to change after initialization
process.group	Group to change after initialization
process.pidfile	Path to PID file

RPSL