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Accepted
Nick Rice
Asked: 2018-04-30 14:03:20 +0800 CST

How can I set up local wildcard (127.0.0.1) domain resolution on 18.04..20.04?

  • 772

On Ubuntu 14.04 I'm using dnsmasq to resolve wildcard example.com domains to the local machine (desktop computer at home).

After much reading around I cannot for the life of me sort out the same on a clean install of 18.04.

All I want to achieve at the moment is:

  • for ping example.com to ping 127.0.0.1 and not 93.184.216.34;
  • for ping anysubdomain.example.com to also ping 127.0.0.1;
  • and for ping google.com to ping the real google.com via the router/IP DNS.

Surely this must be simple, even trivial?

But I'm stumped. I can get the example.com's resolving but only at the expense of breaking everything else.

How can I do this?

dns dnsmasq 18.04 20.04

4 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Here are the steps for ubuntu since 18.04. It's a little bit long since systemd-resolved does not play very well with NetworkManager when configured with dnsmasq.

    Yet I still recommend starting dnsmasq from NetworkManager, because network connectivity changes (WIFI, wired, ...) will be handled transparently.

    Enable dnsmasq in NetworkManager

    Edit the file /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf, and add the line dns=dnsmasq to the [main] section, it will look like this :

    [main]
plugins=ifupdown,keyfile
dns=dnsmasq

[ifupdown]
managed=false

[device]
wifi.scan-rand-mac-address=no

    Let NetworkManager manage /etc/resolv.conf

    sudo rm /etc/resolv.conf ; sudo ln -s /var/run/NetworkManager/resolv.conf /etc/resolv.conf

    Configure example.com

    echo 'address=/.example.com/127.0.0.1' | sudo tee /etc/NetworkManager/dnsmasq.d/example.com-wildcard.conf

    Reload NetworkManager and testing

    NetworkManager should be reloaded for the changes to take effect.

    sudo systemctl reload NetworkManager

    Then we can verify that we can reach some usual site :

    dig askubuntu.com +short
151.101.129.69
151.101.65.69
151.101.1.69
151.101.193.69

    And lastly verify that the example.com and subdomains are resolved as 127.0.0.1:

    dig example.com askubuntu.example.com a.b.c.d.example.com +short
127.0.0.1
127.0.0.1
127.0.0.1
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  2. First make sure in /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf the following line is not present or commented out:

    dns=dnsmasq

    Restart NetworkManager:

    sudo systemctl restart NetworkManager

    Make sure the NetworkManager-controlled dnsmasq is not running anymore, either by killing the process or rebooting your system.

    Then install dnsmasq:

    sudo apt install dnsmasq

    Add the following to /etc/dnsmasq.d/example.com:

    address=/example.com/127.0.0.1

    Restart dnsmasq:

    sudo systemctl restart dnsmasq

    Now you should have a wildcard dns override for example.com.

    • 2

  3. This won't be as simple as editing the hosts file. You have a couple of options:

    This python DNS proxy that will handle wildcards in /etc/hosts

    Using DNSmasq

    • 0

  4. Based on pim's answer, I have created a gist containing a simple Bash script which uses DNSMasq in combination with NetworkManager to setup the .test domain pointing to 127.0.0.1

    See the gist at https://gist.github.com/archan937/d35deef3b1f2b5522dd4b8f397038d27.

    You can execute the script with the following command:

    curl -sL https://gist.githubusercontent.com/archan937/d35deef3b1f2b5522dd4b8f397038d27/raw/setup-dnsmasq.sh | sudo bash

    Cheers!

    • 0