This is a reference blog on how to build a local DNS.
I use Google Chrome as my main browser, but I’ve been thinking of switching (or at least trying out) others. This possibility is hampered by Chrome lock-in powered by extensions and bookmarks, with the latter being the main issue.
The initial step involved a browser agnostic bookmark manager. I settled on buku which is cli based with an additional buku server to allow administration through a web interface. The next step was to permanently run buku server on a local port. Easy enough with systemd. Instead of bookmarking or typing 127.0.0.8000 (for example), I wanted to be able to type buku.me instead. That turned out to be much harder.
All these instructions pertain to Ubuntu 20.04.
Step 1:
Install buku And buku server: pip3 install buku[server].
Step 2:
Permanently run buku server with system d.
Add this script as an executable to your bin folder. (Mine is called buku_server.) You’ll have to find out where buku server is installed with which bukuserver.
# I'm using port 5555 but choose whichever port you want
/home/gordon/miniconda3/bin/bukuserver run --host 127.0.0.1 --port 5555
Next add this service file, buku_server.service, to /etc/systemd/system.
[Unit]
Description=Buku Server
[Service]
User=gordon
WorkingDirectory=/home/gordon/.local/mybin
ExecStart=/bin/bash /home/gordon/.local/mybin/buku_server
Restart=always
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Start and enable the service.
systemctl start buku_server.service
systemctl enable buku_server.service
Go to 127.0.0.1:5555 to check that buku server is running.
Step 3:
This was the draw the rest of the owl part for me. I finally understood the process due to this blog:
https://www.interserver.net/tips/kb/local-domain-names-ubuntu/
First you need to add a line to your /etc/hosts file: 127.0.0.1 buku.me. Then add this to a configuration file in /etc/apache2/sites-available (mine is 000-default.conf):
# ServerName, ProxyPass, and ProxyPasReverse are the entries to change
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin test@test.com
ServerName buku.me
ProxyPass / <http://127.0.0.1:5555/>
ProxyPassReverse / <http://127.0.0.1:5555/>
</VirtualHost>
With that I was able to go to buku.me in my browser to access the buku server.
Bonus:
Even with this setup I still had to manually add urls to buku server. I wanted to have a shortcut, CTRL+B, that would automatically add a url. This solution actually adds whatever is on the clipboard to buku, so it’s on me to make sure it’s a url.
In Ubuntu I mapped this custom shortcut to CTRL+B: home/gordon/buku_add.py where buku_add.py is:
import pyperclip
import os
os.system("buku -a {}".format(pyperclip.paste()))
buku_add.py is a vanilla Python script instead of an executable because that didn’t work. I have no idea why.