I have two network interfaces configured via DHCP. As a result, /etc/resolv.conf
is populated with information coming from the DHCP server.
How can I edit this file?
I know that if I add prepend domain-name-servers 127.0.0.1
to /etc/dhcp/dhclient.conf
I can obtain nameserver 127.0.0.1
as the first (and only) line of /etc/resolv.conf
.
What if I want 127.0.0.1 and only one of the two nameserver addresses provided via DHCP?
Best Answer
In Ubuntu 12.04 and later,
/etc/resolv.conf
is dynamically generated by the resolvconf utility. (Actually, resolvconf generates/run/resolvconf/resolv.conf
and/etc/resolv.conf
is a symbolic link to that. That's the default configuration; it is also possible to run with a static file at/etc/resolv.conf
but that is non-standard.) Nameserver information (nameserver addresses and search domain names) gets registered with resolvconf by interface configurers (ifup
,NetworkManager
,dhclient
, etc.). On the basis of what has been registered, resolvconf generates an up-to-dateresolv.conf
file.Therefore, you can't edit the
resolv.conf
file directly. If you want to control what ends up inresolv.conf
you will have to configure the resolvconf utility. Please see the resolvconf documentation for more information.The answer to the specific question "What if I want 127.0.0.1 and only one of the two nameserver addresses provided via DHCP?" is:
prepend domain-name-servers 127.0.0.1
to/etc/dhcp/dhclient.conf
. The correct protocol is for local nameservers to register their local listen address(es) with resolvconf when they are ready to provide local name service; when they do this there is no need for DHCP clients to do so too. Dnsmasq does the right thing by default. In the case of BIND 9, you have to setRESOLVCONF=yes
in/etc/default/bind9
to cause it to register the address127.0.0.1
with resolvconf.127.0.0.1
. To disable this behavior, create a file/etc/default/resolvconf
containing the lineTRUNCATE_NAMESERVER_LIST_AFTER_LOOPBACK_ADDRESS=no
.Third, resolvconf by default truncates the list of nameservers after three items. There is no point in including more addresses because the glibc resolver ignores any addresses after the first three. To cause resolvconf to truncate the list after two addresses you have to edit the script
/etc/resolvconf/update.d/libc
to replace this lineby the following one.