[TriLUG] Changing DNS Servers (was Request for help: residential internet service provider options.)

[Alan Porter via TriLUG]

> Resolv.conf is no longer a static file and gets re-written by the system.

This depends.

If you have the "resolvconf" package installed, or if you are running 
network-manager, then this file might get overwritten.  If not, then the 
file stays put.

There are several ways to configure DNS, and it's super flexible (and 
therefore confusing).

I have both dnsmasq and unbound running on my router.  Dnsmasq is a 
local DHCP server and a caching DNS server, and it forwards any cache 
misses to an upstream DNS server.  For the truly paranoid, unbound is a 
recursive DNS server that does the name lookups itself.

So there might be a few places you can set your nameserver that will 
affect the /etc/resolv.conf file:
  - /etc/resolv.conf itself, if you do not have something that overwrites it
  - /etc/resolvconf/*, which allows packages like unbound and dnsmasq to 
plug entries in
  - /etc/dhcp/dhclient.conf - try the "supersede domain-name-servers" option
  - /etc/network/interfaces can have entries that will affect 
/etc/resolv.conf

Alan