How do I disable DNSMasq cache and enable the Dnscrypt Cache instead?

[ATheCoder]

First I wanted to thank you for this awesome piece of software you wrote. Setting up DNSCrypt on the router is super awesome.

What I wanted to do is to setup Caching on the level of DNSCrypt and not on the level of DNSMasq this is because I wanna use the Cloaking feature extensively and constantly change or add new hosts.

Would appreciate if you could help me with this.

[jumpsmm7]

For dnscrypt-proxy, enabling the cache is simple, you edit the dnscrypt-proxy.toml. I don't see how it is significant to disable the DNSMASQ cache in this instance since dnsmasq is being a forwarder. I do not see how you will be able to fully leverage the cloaking feature in the manner you would like since dnsmasq is forwarding requests go clients -> dnsmasq -> dnscrypt proxy. That means DNSMASQ is seen as the only "client" to dnscrypt-proxy. Essentially dnsmasq is the middle man. I believe if you want to be able to do what you are trying to do, then you have to eliminate the middle man by making sure dnsmasq is not serving as the DNS server altogether (e.g. clients->dnscrypt-proxy). In this instance DNSMASQ port is set to zero, and dnscrypt proxies port would be set to listen on the LAN ip address of the router at port:53. DNSMASQ would still hand out the DNS servers address via dhcp. This will be truly the only way you can achieve what you are trying. As for this script, this is not in the cards because so many people use Diversion Adblocker in conjunction with dnscrypt-proxy, not to mention all the technical issues it will create for users trying to use AIMESH; Diversion and AIMESH depend on the DNS functionality of dnsmasq. It is truly beyond the scope of this installer to try to change the "default" behaviors of the router that much.

Your other possible hope is that Dnscrypt-proxy is able to leverage the client information from EDNS0 information passed to it from dnsmasq. This means you will have to enable dnsmasq features add-mac and add-subnet to expose the clients information in the requests being forward from dnsmasq to dnscrypt-proxy. I honestly do not know if dnscrypt-proxy has evolved enough to leverage this information. For this, you have your research ahead of you.

But to disable or change any behavior in DNSMASQ, you will need to use /jffs/scripts/dnsmasq.postconf.
Here is the official Asuswrt-Merlin custom scripts guide:
https://github.com/RMerl/asuswrt-merlin.ng/wiki/Custom-config-files#postconf-scripts
Also, it wouldn't hurt for you to read over dnsmasq manpage:
https://thekelleys.org.uk/dnsmasq/docs/dnsmasq-man.html