Pascal's Digital Garden

homelab - No Client Configuration & Dynamic Subdomains

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Overview

  1. No Client Configuration: Every device in the network can access homelab services (homelab.lan and subdomains) without manual edits (like /etc/hosts or manually entering DNS servers).

  2. Dynamic Subdomains: Subdomains such as <sub>.homelab.lan or <MR-23>.<sub>.homelab.lan can dynamically be applied, without requiring additional DNS entries for each new service or test deployment.

Implementation Details

DNSMasq on the Router

• A GL-MT6000 router (running a GL.iNet-customized OpenWrt) provides DNS. Under DHCP and DNS → General Settings, a rule is defined:

/homelab.lan/192.168.8.201
/git.homelab.lan/192.168.8.200
  • This first wildcard mapping means all requests for *.homelab.lan resolve to the homelab server at 192.168.8.201
  • The second wildcard mapping means, that all requests git.homelab.lan are resolved to the homlab server at 192.168.8.200

Automatic DNS Assignment

• The router’s DHCP automatically sets itself (192.168.8.1) as the DNS server for LAN clients. No need for manual configuration on each device.

• Initially, DNSMasq rejected external queries by default if localservice=1. Changing it to 0 allowed DNS to function network-wide:

uci set dhcp.@dnsmasq[0].localservice='0'
uci commit dhcp
/etc/init.d/dnsmasq restart

No Per-Device Changes

• Because devices on the LAN receive the router as their DNS by default, they can immediately resolve homelab.lan subdomains without extra edits.

Wildcard Subdomains for CI/CD

• With /homelab.lan/192.168.8.201 in place, any subdomain of homelab.lan (e.g., test.myapp.homelab.lan or mr-23.myapp.homelab.lan) automatically points to the homelab server.

• A reverse proxy homelab - Ingress on 192.168.8.201 inspects the incoming Host header and routes it to the appropriate container or application.

• This setup allows CI/CD pipelines to create new deployments and subdomains without modifying DNS rules on the router.

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