Relay Deployment with Hyper-V Image

Download the VHDX file

Once you've downloaded  RelayImage 22.04 Ubuntu or RelayImage 18.04 Ubuntu onto your machine, the following steps show you how to set up and use the image

Creating the Relay VM

1. Create a New Virtual Machine
   
   
2. Make Sure to choose Generation 2
3. Make sure you choose to use an existing virtual hard disk (VHDX format)
   
   
4. In order to run the Relay as a Generation 2 Hyper-V virtual machine, you can either switch off the Secure Boot or Enable Linux Secure Boot depending on your HyperV version as follows:
   
5. 
6. 

Setting up the Relay

1. Log in to the VM:

   user: dnsfilter

   password: ChangeMeNow!

2. Change the password:

   passwd

3. Edit the relay.conf file(use step 4 for some values to edit):

   sudo nano relay.conf -- (this is a symbolic link to /etc/relay/relay.conf)

4. In relay.conf (found at the following location: /etc/relay/relay.conf ) set secret site key, Name, and set level to "debug"
   Note1: The name needs to match the deployment name set in your dashboard. 
   Note2: To save the changes made within relay.conf use ctrl+o to write out then hit return to finalise the file name, you can then exit with ctrl+x.
5. By default, the system is set to use DHCP to obtain an IP - this is fine as long as you create a permanent DHCP lease in your firewall for the MAC of the Virtual NIC of the ESXI Container. If you wish to have a static IP assigned to the machine, you can do the following by using the command in step 5. (Note: # comments out the line it is placed before)
   
   Add a # before dhcp4: true 
   Remove the #'s before the next 5 lines
   Update addresses: [192.168.1.15/24] to reflect the static IP that the machine is going to have - (i.e.: it would become addresses: [172.16.0.44/24])
   Update gateway4: 192.168.1.1 to the appropriate gateway of the network the machine is on - (i.e.: it would become gateway4: 172.16.0.1)
6. Save the file and run:
   

   sudo netplan generate
   sudo netplan apply

7. Reboot the machine
8. Verify General Connectivity by running the following command to verify that the correct IP is shown:

   ifconfig

9. Verify that a response is received by running:

   ping google.com

10. If everything has gone well up until now, it’s time to start up the relay!
11. Start the docker service by running the following commands:

    sudo systemctl enable docker.service
    sudo systemctl start docker.service

12. Start the Relay containers by running:

    sudo docker start relay1 relay2

    Wait 10-20 seconds
13. Verify the containers are running properly by running:

    sudo docker ps

    This will provide some output similar to one of the two following blocks:
    *Good* output looks like this and you can move to step 14:
    

    CONTAINER ID	IMAGE	COMMAND	CREATED	STATUS	PORTS	NAMES
    5fa41e37ecdc	dnsfilter/relay:0-rtt	“/go/bin/relay-linux…”	6 days ago	Up 12 Seconds		relay2
    1d91eb21abc2	dnsfilter/relay:0-rtt	“/go/bin/relay-linux…”	6 days ago	Up 13 Seconds		relay1

    *Bad* output looks like this and some troubleshooting will be required:
    

    CONTAINER ID	IMAGE	COMMAND	CREATED	STATUS	PORTS	NAMES
    5fa41e37ecdc	dnsfilter/relay:0-rtt	“/go/bin/relay-linux…”	6 days ago	Restarting (1) 3 seconds ago		relay2
    1d91eb21abc2	dnsfilter/relay:0-rtt	“/go/bin/relay-linux…”	6 days ago	Restarting (1) 4 seconds ago		relay1

14. If you run:

    sudo docker logs relay1

    You will receive the output of the logs for that container (relay1) - the two most common errors you will see are:
    time=“2022-02-23T21:53:33.355562001Z” level=fatal msg=“can not auto-register agent, please verify settings or contact support, trace: invalid organization or network secret key”
    This means the secret key you’ve entered into the relay.conf file is invalid.
    Double-check that the correct value is in the file.
    time=“2022-02-23T21:58:33Z” level=fatal msg=“not a valid TOML config file” config=/etc/relay/relay.conf error=“open /usr/local/bin/lan-proxy.conf: no such file or directory”
    This means there is a formatting error or errant character in your relay.conf file - verify that it is nearly identical to our example file
15. Resolve these issues and run:

    sudo docker restart relay1 relay2

    Verify that things match the good output above, and move to step 16.
16. Verify the relay containers are doing what they’re supposed to:

    nslookup -type=txt debug.dnsfilter.com 127.0.0.1 (from the VM itself)
    nslookup -type=txt debug.dnsfilter.com <internal IP address> (from another machine on the network)

    *Good* Output looks something like:
    Non-authoritative answer:
    

    debug.dnsfilter.com text = “time=2022-02-23 22:02:45.528505065 +0000 UTC
    debug.dnsfilter.com text = “serverid=55802”
    debug.dnsfilter.com text = “serverip=103.247.36.36"
    debug.dnsfilter.com text = “serverport=53”

    Along with multiple additional lines. Skip ahead to step 17.
    *Bad* Output looks something like:
    Non-authoritative answer:

    *** Can’t find debug.dnsfilter.com: No answer
    Authoritative answers can be found from: dnsfilter.com
    
    origin = amir.ns.cloudflare.com
    
    mail addr = dns.cloudflare.com
    
    serial = 2271027187
    
    refresh = 10000
    
    retry = 2400
    
    expire = 604800
    
    minimum = 3600

    If this is your output and you're certain the containers are running properly, the likely culprit is <Transparent Proxying> and we recommend you investigate that or reach out to support.
17. You’re done! You can now point all appropriate machines on the network to use this VM for DNS Resolution