Although under the hood a lot has changed in OpenDNSSEC 2.0, the architecture and workflow has more in common with OpenDNSSEC 1.4 than it differs. This 'HOWTO' will initially focus on procedures that have changed or are formerly not possible. In the future this should be more complete and include updated sections now only find in the 1.4 Documentation.

Upgrade OpenDNSSEC 1.4.9 to OpenDNSSEC 2.0

With the rewrite of the ods-enforcerd daemon the database layout has changed as well. Upgrade scripts for Sqlite3 and MySQL are provided in the source tarball in enforcer/utils/1.4-2.0_db_convert. The text file README.md in that directory explains the process. Note: while 1.4 supplied scripts to convert from one database backend to the other, 2.0 does not have these yet. If you are planning to change database backend do that first before upgrading OpenDNSSEC.

Perform an non-scheduled key rollover

OpenDNSSEC can perform a key rollover at any time. It does not matter if another rollover is already happening.

ods-enforcer key rollover -z example.com -t ZSK 

The next scheduled rollover (unless <ManualRollover/> set in the policy) for this key type will be offset from now. I.e the new key will be used for the full lifetime configured in the policy. Keys that are no longer desired are being phased out as soon as the policy tolerates and within the bounds of what are valid DNSSEC states. This means it is very well possible an already running rollover is never completed. Consequently if the lifetime of a key is very short, in the order of the TTL of the DNSKEY, it might be possible the Enforcer is never able to complete a rollover and the old key will be used indefinitely. This is considered a bad configuration.

Change a policy configuration

A zone is tied to a policy, and policies are described in kasp.xml in /etc/opendnssec. The 2.0 enforcer will store policy timing information per key in its database. As a result all TTL values can safely be changed without running the risk of a zone become bogus during a current or future rollover. In contrast, if one would shorten a TTL in 1.4 the next rollover has a change to be performed to quickly as the records would still be in cache with the old, long TTL. After editing the policy in kasp.xml one should issue a policy import.

ods-enforcer policy import

There is no need to restart the enforcer. In fact, the KASP is not being read on startup. Any new keys will use the new timings.

Change the signing algorithm

Changing the algorithm is no different than changing other policy parameters. Change the <Algorithm> field in the KASP (make sure to do this for both KSK and ZSK) and run policy import.

ods-enforcer policy import

Soon the enforcer wil notice there are no keys with the newly chosen algorithm and will introduce new ones. Algorithm rollovers are a bit different than normal rollovers. During the process your zone will be signed with two keys. 

Clear all state and start over

Suppose you are testing OpenDNSSEC in your environent and at some point want to reset is to be like a fresh installed instance. The main thing to do is run ods-enforcer-db-setup (after stopping OpenDNSSEC entirely). The Enforcer database is then clean and empty. We still need to files from /var to make sure the Signer isn't still using old data.

rm /var/opendnssec/enforcer/zones.xml
rm /var/opendnssec/signconf/*
rm /var/opendnssec/signer/*
ods-enforcer-db-setup

Stop using DNSSEC for a zone

If it is no longer desired to sign a zone, OpenDNSSEC can help to stop signing in a safe way. The zone will become insecure without running the risk of some validators to see a bogus zone. The way to do it is to configure no keys in its policy. The Enforcer will then retract the current keys as soon as possible.

For example

<Keys>
	<TTL>PT3600S</TTL>
	<RetireSafety>PT3600S</RetireSafety>
	<PublishSafety>PT3600S</PublishSafety>
	<Purge>P14D</Purge>
	<KSK>
		<Algorithm length="2048">8</Algorithm>
		<Lifetime>P1Y</Lifetime>
		<Repository>SoftHSM</Repository>
	</KSK>
	<ZSK>
		<Algorithm length="1024">8</Algorithm>
		<Lifetime>P90D</Lifetime>
		<Repository>SoftHSM</Repository>
	</ZSK>
</Keys>

Will become

<Keys>
	<TTL>PT3600S</TTL>
	<RetireSafety>PT3600S</RetireSafety>
	<PublishSafety>PT3600S</PublishSafety>
	<Purge>P14D</Purge>
</Keys>

After this you must instruct the Enforcer to reread the policy.