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Supermasters and Autoprimaries

A supermaster is a primary server that Poweradmin's PowerDNS instance trusts to create zones on its own. When that server sends a NOTIFY for a zone the secondary does not have, PowerDNS provisions the slave zone automatically instead of ignoring it. This saves adding every new zone by hand on the secondary. PowerDNS documents the mechanism, including the NOTIFY-matching rules Poweradmin cannot enforce, under Autoprimary operation.

Supermasters

Note: PowerDNS renamed this concept to autoprimary in 4.5.0; 4.6 is when it gained an API and pdnsutil commands for managing autoprimaries. Poweradmin follows the connected server: the UI says "Autoprimaries" when the server supports the autoprimary API (4.6+) and "Supermasters" when it does not. The URLs, permissions and database table keep the older supermaster name in both cases, so this page uses whichever term matches what you will see.

Finding the page

The list lives at /supermasters. It is not in the top navigation - reach it from the cards on the dashboard, which appear only if you hold the relevant permission.

Permissions

Permission Grants
supermaster_view See the list
supermaster_add Add a new entry
supermaster_edit Edit and delete entries

There is no separate delete permission - supermaster_edit covers both. See Permissions.

Fields

Each entry has three fields, which map directly to PowerDNS's supermasters table:

Field Description
IP address The address the primary sends NOTIFY from. PowerDNS matches on this exactly, so it must be the source address, not just a name that resolves to it
Hostname in NS record The nameserver hostname that appears in the zone's NS records
Account A Poweradmin username. PowerDNS copies it into the account field of every zone it creates from this entry

The IP address and hostname together form the primary key, so the same IP can appear more than once with different nameserver hostnames. Editing and deleting identify an entry by both values.

PowerDNS creates these zones itself, so Poweradmin does not give them an owner by default. They are invisible to non-administrator users and show up under "zones without owners" in the Database Consistency Check.

Since v4.6.0, set dns.adopt_zone_owner_from_account to true (Docker: PA_DNS_ADOPT_ZONE_OWNER_FROM_ACCOUNT=true) to give such a zone to the user named in Account:

  • With the API backend, the zone sync does it as soon as it finds the new zone.
  • With either backend, the "zones without owners" repair in the consistency check assigns the zone to that user instead of the administrator who runs the repair. This also covers zones that arrived before the setting was turned on.

The account must match the username exactly, including case. A zone that already has an owner or a group is never changed. A user at their zone limit adopts no more zones: the sync leaves the zone ownerless, and the repair gives it to the administrator.

Adding an entry

  1. Open the supermasters list and choose Add autoprimary (or Add supermaster).

  2. Enter the IP address, the nameserver hostname, and the account that should own zones created from it.

  3. Save. The entry takes effect immediately - PowerDNS consults the table when a NOTIFY arrives.

For the secondary to actually build the zone, the primary must also allow it to transfer, and the NOTIFY must come from the address you entered.

Adding, editing and deleting are all written to the activity log; see Database Logging.