COREFILE(5)

💖 COREFILE(5) 💖

okay so this is the corefile man page, bestie — the configuration file for CoreDNS, and honestly? iconic. let's get into it 💅

🌸 NAME 🌸

corefile — configuration file for CoreDNS, no cap.

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

A corefile specifies the internal servers CoreDNS should run and what plugins each of these should chain. The syntax is giving:

[SCHEME://]ZONE [[SCHEME://]ZONE]...[:PORT] {
    [PLUGIN]...
}

• ZONE defines for which name this server should be called. Multiple zones are allowed and should be white space separated. You can use a “reverse” syntax to specify a reverse zone (i.e. ip6.arpa and in-addr.arpa) by using an IP address in the CIDR notation.
• The optional SCHEME defaults to dns://, but can also be tls:// (DNS over TLS), grpc:// (DNS over gRPC) or https:// (DNS over HTTP/2).
• The optional PORT controls on which port the server will bind; this defaults to 53. If you use a port number here, you can't override it with -dns.port (coredns(1)), also see coredns-bind(7).
• Specifying a ZONE and PORT combination multiple times for different servers will lead to an error on startup.
• When a query comes in, it is matched against all zones for all servers; the server with the longest match on the query name will receive the query.
• PLUGIN defines the plugin(s) we want to load into this server. This is optional as well, but a server with no plugins will just return SERVFAIL for all queries. Each plugin can have a number of properties that can have arguments — see the documentation for each plugin.

The Corefile is line oriented: the arguments of a plugin, or of one of its properties, run until the end of the line. Put each plugin, each property and each closing } on a line of its own. A } that shares a line with a plugin or a property can be read as part of that line. For example, this fails with Unexpected '}' because no matching opening brace:

. { whoami }

Comments are allowed and begin with an unquoted hash # and continue to the end of the line. Comments may be started anywhere on a line.

Environment variables are supported and either the Unix or Windows form may be used: {$ENV_VAR_1} or {%ENV_VAR_2%}.

You can use the import “plugin” (see coredns-import(7)) to include parts of other files.

If CoreDNS can't find a Corefile to load, it loads the following builtin one:

. {
    whoami
    log
}

🎀 IMPORT 🎀

You can use the import “plugin” to include parts of other files, see https://coredns.io/plugins/import, and coredns-import(7).

🦋 SNIPPETS 🦋

If you want to reuse a snippet, you can define one and then use it with import.

(mysnippet) {
    log
    whoami
}

. {
    import mysnippet
}

🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

The ZONE is root zone ., the PLUGIN is chaos. The chaos plugin takes an (optional) argument: CoreDNS-001. This text is returned on a CH class query: dig CH TXT version.bind @localhost.

. {
   chaos CoreDNS-001
}

When defining a new zone, you either create a new server, or add it to an existing one. Here we define one server that handles two zones; that potentially chain different plugins:

example.org {
    whoami
}
org {
    whoami
}

Is identical to:

example.org org {
    whoami
}

Reverse zones can be specified as domain names:

0.0.10.in-addr.arpa {
    whoami
}

or by just using the CIDR notation:

10.0.0.0/24 {
    whoami
}

This also works on a non octet boundary:

10.0.0.0/27 {
    whoami
}

👑 AUTHORS 👑

CoreDNS Authors.

⭐ COPYRIGHT ⭐

Apache License 2.0

💜 SEE ALSO 💜

The manual page for CoreDNS: coredns(1) and more documentation on https://coredns.io. Also see the import documentation at https://coredns.io/plugins/import and all the manual pages for the plugins.

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byeee from CoreDNS, October 2026 edition — COREFILE(5) out 🫶💅✨