Unbound (with PiHole): Where is root.hints?

Question

I installed unbound to use with pihole with this instruction: https://docs.pi-hole.net/guides/dns/unbound/

It says that I don't need to download root.hints, if I use apt install. Because it would download root.hints automatically with the "dependency dns-root-data" (whatever that means?).

If you are installing unbound from a package manager, it should install the root.hints file automatically with the dependency dns-root-data. The root hints will then be automatically updated by your package manager.

If I now

sudo apt install unbound

and then

ls -al /var/lib/unbound/

there is no root.hints

Shouldn't it be there, because "apt install unbound" has downloaded it automatically?

Answer 1

The article talks about installing on Debian, using Debian's apt package manager, so it is referencing the dns-root-data package that's also available through apt. In other words, it is not part of the 'unbound' package – it is installed together with the 'unbound' package.

As this is a generic package meant to be used by various DNS software, it installs files into a generic directory (still beneath /usr/share) and not into an Unbound-specific location. apt-file says that root.hints can be found at:

/usr/share/dns/root.hints

Note that this is Debian-specific. Unbound actually includes a compiled-in list of root nameservers, and on other distributions it will run even without an external hints file. (However, unbundling is part of Debian's packaging policy.)