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

Solution 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.)