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bakytn
Asked: 2012-04-02 04:48:18 +0800 CST

Configure NetworkManager's dnsmasq to use /etc/hosts

  • 772

I have installed DNSMASQ but it was not starting as 53 port was busy.

I found out that ubuntu already had dnsmasq package and it's working.

Now the problem is...I just want to be able to resolve my hosts in /etc/hosts through it

i.e: nslookup somehostonlan localhost to be resolved to certain IP taken from /etc/hosts file.

but this is not happening.

Why? BTW, as the caching DNS server it's working fine. I just want it to resolve hosts from /etc/hosts file that's all

dnsmasq

4 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    To speed up internet, ubuntu 12.04 has added a plugin to NetworkManager to start dnsmasq, a local dns server that caches dns entries. The problem is the plugin has hardcoded the --no-hosts string.

    So one solution is to comment out the line that load the plugin in the NetworkManager config file and restart NetworkManager :

    sudo mv /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf.bak
sudo bash -c 'cat /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf.bak | sed -e "s/^\(dns=dnsmasq\)$/#\1/" > /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf'
sudo restart network-manager

    Another solution is to wrap dnsmasq to filter out the undesired arguments:

    sudo mv /usr/sbin/dnsmasq /usr/sbin/dnsmasq.bin
sudo bash -c 'cat > /usr/sbin/dnsmasq' << EOF
#!/bin/sh
dnsmasq=/usr/sbin/dnsmasq.bin

exec $dnsmasq `echo $@ | sed -e s/--no-hosts//`
EOF

sudo chmod 755 /usr/sbin/dnsmasq

    Please mark the bug as affecting you.

    Another solution without patching system files

    cat /etc/NetworkManager/dnsmasq.d/hosts.conf 

addn-hosts=/etc/hosts
    • 23

  2. This bug still affected me even now ( Ubuntu 14.04 ).

    Finally I found a solution that, simply add this line 'addn-hosts=/etc/hosts' to dnsmasq configuration file of Newworkmanager package.

    echo 'addn-hosts=/etc/hosts' > /etc/NetworkManager/dnsmasq.d/etc-hosts
service network-manager restart

    The idea is, we are adding /etc/hosts as a additional host file .

    Even if I could find a solution, hard-coded option '--no-hosts' in the binary file /usr/sbin/NetworkManager disappoints me.

    • 7

  3. As of August 2015, the other answers are outdated.

    Simple answer

    1. Create /etc/NetworkManager/dnsmasq.d/hosts.conf.
    2. Put lines like address=/whatever/1.2.3.4 in it. See the docs (look for --address). Wildcards are possible: address/.whatever./1.2.3.4.
    3. Kill dnsmasq (bug).
    4. Restart it: $ service network-manager restart.
    • 7

  4. dnsmasq should automatically use the /etc/hosts file. This can be disabled by the -h command line option or no-hosts configuration option. I would not expect either to be set in the default configuration.

    Try forcing dnsmasq to reload its hosts file. (Changes to the configuration file require a restart). Either of these commands should work.

    service dnsmasq reload

kill -HUP $(pidof dnsmasq)

    If you are working with a system that has no-hosts specified you should be able to use the addn-hosts option to override it. Normally, this would be used to read an additional file in /etc/hosts format. This can be used to specify additional host data that you want DNS to provide, but don't want in your /etc/hosts file. This can be used to allow the package manager and related tools to manage /etc/hosts while additional hosts data is provided in an alternate file.

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