"dry-run" mode to help with dnssec-policy migration
Description
For some users of BIND 9, esp. people are part time DNS admins only, migrating from manual DNSSEC key management with "auto-dnssec maintain;" towards "dnssec-policy" is difficult.
While the documentation provided by ISC is good, there is currently no way to "verify" the new "dnssec-policy" configuration before enabling it. Experience has shown (in DNS training classes, but also in real world deployments) that there are many things that can go wrong:
- differences in the DNSSEC key configuration (old vs. new)
- file system permissions on the old key material
- file system location of the old key material
- issues with the time-events stored in the old key material
Going online with a slightly wrong configuration can cause an immediate key rollover, which might break the zone. Recovering from this situation is possible, but requires good knowledge of BIND 9 DNSSEC workings
Request
Provide a "dnssec-policy dry-run" mode, where BIND 9 will log the next steps in the automatic DNSSEC management to the log files (e.g. category "DNSSEC"), but will not execute any changes to the DNSSEC signed zone or the key material. This will enable the user to test drive the new "dnssec-policy" to see if it will act as expected.
Admins can create a configuration with "dry-run" mode enabled, check the logfiles, and if the actions in the log-file match the expectations, the "dry-run" mode can be removed and the new configuration will become active.