How do I enter a strong (long) DKIM key into DNS?

Solution 1:

You need to split them in the text field. I believe that 2048 is the practical limit for key sizes. Split the text field into parts 255 characters or less. There is overhead for each split.

There are two formats for long fields.

TXT  "part one" \
     "part two"

TXT ( "part one"
      "part two" )

Both of which will combine as "part onepart two". More details from Zytrax.

To generate my dkim entry I insert my public key file and wrap it in quotation marks.
My public key file contains the following:

MIGfMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4GNADCBiQKBgQD78Ki2d0zmOlmjYNDC7eLG3af12KrjmPDeYRr3
q9MGquKRkRFlY+Alq4vMxnp5pZ7lDaAXXwLYjN91YY7ARbCEpqapA9Asl854BCHMA7L+nvk9kgC0
ovLlGvg+hhqIPqwLNI97VSRedE60eS+CwcShamHTMOXalq2pOUw7anuenQIDAQAB

After editing the key in my dns zone file appears as follows:

dkim3._domainkey        IN      TXT     ("v=DKIM1; t=s; p=" 
"MIGfMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4GNADCBiQKBgQD78Ki2d0zmOlmjYNDC7eLG3af12KrjmPDeYRr3"
"q9MGquKRkRFlY+Alq4vMxnp5pZ7lDaAXXwLYjN91YY7ARbCEpqapA9Asl854BCHMA7L+nvk9kgC0"
"ovLlGvg+hhqIPqwLNI97VSRedE60eS+CwcShamHTMOXalq2pOUw7anuenQIDAQAB")

DNS returns it as follow:

 bill:~$ host -t TXT dkim3._domainkey.systemajik.com
 dkim3._domainkey.systemajik.com descriptive text "v=DKIM1\; t=s\; p=" "MIGfMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4GNADCBiQKBgQD78Ki2d0zmOlmjYNDC7eLG3af12KrjmPDeYRr3" "q9MGquKRkRFlY+Alq4vMxnp5pZ7lDaAXXwLYjN91YY7ARbCEpqapA9Asl854BCHMA7L+nvk9kgC0" "ovLlGvg+hhqIPqwLNI97VSRedE60eS+CwcShamHTMOXalq2pOUw7anuenQIDAQAB"

DNS treats it as one long string with no extra spaces where the lines are joined. All " " sequences are ignored.

Solution 2:

If it's Amazon Route 53 then don't use newlines (only spaces) between chunks.

"do it" "this way"

"not like"
"this"

See https://serverfault.com/a/763871/80856