Re: [DNSOP] I-D Action: draft-ietf-dnsop-extended-error-05.txt

[Stephane Bortzmeyer <[e-mail]>]

On Mon, Mar 11, 2019 at 03:08:10PM -0700,
 [e-mail] <[e-mail]> wrote 
 a message of 46 lines which said:

>         Title           : Extended DNS Errors
>         Authors         : Warren Kumari
>                           Evan Hunt
>                           Roy Arends
>                           Wes Hardaker
>                           David C Lawrence
> 	Filename        : draft-ietf-dnsop-extended-error-05.txt

At the IETF 104 hackathon in Prague, Vladimír Čunát and myself
implemented it in the Knot resolver
<https://www.knot-resolver.cz/>. You can see the result in the git
merge request
<https://gitlab.labs.nic.cz/knot/knot-resolver/merge_requests/794>
(branch extended_error
<https://gitlab.labs.nic.cz/knot/knot-resolver/tree/extended_error>).

> 4.1.5.  SERVFAIL Extended DNS Error Code 5 - DNSSEC Indeterminate
>   The resolver attempted to perform DNSSEC validation, but validation
>   ended in the Indeterminate state.  The R flag should not be set.

Isn't there an error here? 4.1 is the section for NOERROR. What
should be returned for DNSSEC Indeterminate? NOERROR or SERVFAIL? (In
the first case, change the text, in the second, move this paragraph to
4.2.)

Now, implementation experience. We tested with Wireshark and dig (did
not try to develop a client using the extended error code, just the server).

As expected, producing extended error codes is quite simple and the
draft is clear. The camel will be happy.

The biggest issue is of course to find out what to put in the extended
error code. On some resolvers (at least on Knot), the place where the
error is noticed can be quite far from the place where the answer is
built, with its EDNS options. In practice, we had to add data to the
request object, for the extended error information to be carried to
the module that emits the extended error code EDNS option. So, the
real difficulty is not in the draft, but in knowing and understanding
your resolver.

Some details:

* no resolver will use all the response-code/info-codes because some
are never reached for this resolver, or are mixed with other
issues. Generic errors (such as "SERVFAIL Extended DNS Error Code 1 -
DNSSEC Bogus") are useful for when you cannot reliably find the problem.

* the draft is silent about the laying out of bits in info-code. Not
many IETF protocols have an integer field which is larger than a byte
but not byte-aligned.

* the draft has a passing mention that multiple extended error options
are allowed but I don't see how it could be used by the poor client
trying to figure out what happened. I suggest to disallow it.

* the draft has (rightly so) two info-codes for NXDOMAIN/Blocked and
NXDOMAIN/Censored but Knot cannot use it currently since the policy
module (written in Lua) has no way today to be configured to express
the difference. Not a problem in the draft but it will be probably a
common case that the resolver cannot make use of *all* codes.

Let's end with a few examples:

4.2.2.  SERVFAIL Extended DNS Error Code 2 - Signature Expired

% dig  @::1 -p 9053 A servfail.nl         
...
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: SERVFAIL, id: 12100
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags: do; udp: 4096
; OPT=65500: 00 00 20 02 44 4e 53 53 45 43 20 65 78 70 69 72 65 64 20 73 69 67 6e 61 74 75 72 65 73 (".. .DNSSEC expired signatures")
...


4.2.7.  SERVFAIL Extended DNS Error Code 7 - No Reachable Authority

% dig  @::1 -p 9053 A brk.internautique.fr
...
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: SERVFAIL, id: 38620
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags: do; udp: 4096
; OPT=65500: 80 00 20 07 6e 6f 20 4e 53 20 77 69 74 68 20 61 6e 20 61 64 64 72 65 73 73 (".. .no NS with an address")
...

(Not an ideal message but this is quite generic code in Knot.)


4.5.1.  NXDOMAIN Extended DNS Error Code 1 - Blocked

% dig  @::1 -p 9053 A googleanalytics.com 
...
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NXDOMAIN, id: 1189
;; flags: qr aa rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 2

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags: do; udp: 4096
; OPT=65500: 80 00 30 01 4e 6f 20 74 72 61 63 6b 69 6e 67 ("..0.No tracking")
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;googleanalytics.com.	IN A

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
googleanalytics.com.	10800 IN SOA googleanalytics.com. nobody.invalid. (
				1          ; serial
				3600       ; refresh (1 hour)
				1200       ; retry (20 minutes)
				604800     ; expire (1 week)
				10800      ; minimum (3 hours)
				)

;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
explanation.invalid.	10800 IN TXT "No tracking"