DNS on Barn

Pigsty host setup: fixed names and CA trust

Wed, 11 Nov 2026 00:00:00 +0800

Recommend one optional host setup operation: install a fixed set of Pigsty names and trust the lab’s public root CA certificate. Keep one entry address, defaulting to 10.10.10.10, and reuse the same CA across ordinary lab rebuilds. With unchanged names, address and CA trust, setup is a no-op and needs no elevation. This gives the common lab a mostly one-time host integration step.

Status — 2026-11-11: proposal, not implemented. This narrows the first delivery from the earlier full host-DNS design. General inventory extraction, dynamic node/PG/VIP publication, split DNS and a resident DNS service remain optional future work. Their implementation is not a prerequisite for this fixed profile. This review changed documentation only; it did not read a CA private key, install trust, modify system hosts or operate VMs.

Host DNS and domain resolution for Pigsty on Barn

Tue, 10 Nov 2026 00:00:00 +0800

Note

Scope narrowed on 2026-11-11: the first delivery is now fixed core names and Pigsty CA trust. This page retains the broader exporter and resolver research; its general inventory and split-DNS work is optional expansion, not a prerequisite for the fixed profile.

Recommend explicit, opt-in managed hosts publication first. Pigsty computes the names and service targets; Barn previews and installs one neutral address/name snapshot through its existing helper. This is worthwhile for opening portals, addressing nodes and connecting to database or VIP names in a static Linux lab. Fixed addresses make repeated synchronization cheap: unchanged records need no privileged operation. Root is still required for every actual system hosts change, including removal. Setup does not grant perpetual update permission, and a cached or passwordless sudo authorization eliminates a password prompt, not privilege. Keep per-command authorization; consider suffix forwarding when a stable guest DNS endpoint and a complete namespace exist. A host daemon needs demonstrated demand beyond these two options.

Replacing Vagrant with Barn in Pigsty: resources, names, and migration work

Tue, 10 Nov 2026 00:00:00 +0800

Pigsty can use one inventory for Barn and Ansible. The migration needs to preserve topology selection, image matrices, resource scaling, fixed addresses, and SSH workflows while replacing the old scripts’ implicit addressing, naming, and destruction behavior.

Status (2026-11-10): vm_scale, the 1-vCPU / 2-GiB defaults, vm_hosts, barn hosts install -f, and Pigsty’s bin/sandbox-dns are implemented in the local working trees and have passed the offline checks below. They are unreleased. Pigsty’s Makefile still uses Vagrant; the second half of this article describes the remaining work. Released Barn 1.1.0 actually defaults to 2 vCPU / 4 GiB when parsing an inventory and does not support these additions.