Systemd 229 Released With Many Changes, DNS Resolver Now Fully Supported

The last major systemd update was all the way back in November, which is rather strange considering their normal frequent releases, but that changed today with the release of systemd 229.

Systemd 229 has been released and given the span since systemd 228, this is a very hearty release. First up, the systemd-resolved DNS resolver is no longer experimental but is now fully-supported and offers a ton of new features, including DNSSEC support.

The systemd DNSSEC support is explained as, "DNSSEC mode is currently turned off by default, but it is expected that this is turned on by default in one of the next releases. For now, we invite everybody to test the DNSSEC logic by setting DNSSEC=allow-downgrade in /etc/systemd/resolved.conf. The service also gained a full set of D-Bus interfaces, including calls to configure DNS and DNSSEC settings per link (for consumption by external network management software). systemd-resolved (and systemd-networkd along with it) now know to distinguish between "search" and "routing" domains. The former are used to qualify single-label names, the latter are purely used for routing lookups within certain domains to specific links. resolved will now also synthesize RRs for all entries from /etc/hosts."

Systemd 229 also has improvements to a number of other sub-commands, most systemd tools now honor the $SYSTEMD_COLORS environment variable, improvements to system clock handling on boot-up, multiple new service settings, and a variety of other enhancements.