override dns nameserver

Question

i wish to set higher priority for my dns nameservers, or override the ones that are being set by the dhcp server. no matter which approach i took, nslookup never displays the right dns nameserver.

please see the snippet below.

$ cat /etc/*release* | grep -i dist
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=14.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=trusty
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 14.04 LTS"

resolvconf:

$ cat /etc/resolvconf/resolv.conf.d/base 
nameserver 208.67.222.222
nameserver 208.67.220.220
$ sudo resolvconf --enable-updates
$ sudo resolvconf -u
$ nslookup
> server
Default server: 127.0.1.1
Address: 127.0.1.1#53

dhcp:

$ tail -n 1 /etc/dhcp/dhclient.conf 
supersede domain-name-servers 208.67.222.222, 208.67.220.220;
$ sudo service networking restart
$ nslookup
> server
Default server: 127.0.1.1
Address: 127.0.1.1#53

how it can be done??

Solution 1

Add a header to your resolvconf configuration file. Create or edit the file, "/etc/resolvconf/resolv.conf.d/head". Add your preference to it.

/etc/resolvconf/resolv.conf.d/head:

# Dynamic resolv.conf(5) file for glibc resolver(3) generated by resolvconf(8)
#     DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE BY HAND -- YOUR CHANGES WILL BE OVERWRITTEN


nameserver 8.8.8.8
search [yourpreference.com]

Restart your networking service, rebooting is the surest way to restart it.

Solution 2

See https://askubuntu.com/a/63163/267945 - much better solution:

If you want to override or append to the name servers suggested by the DHCP server, you can configure this in /etc/dhcp/dhclient.conf, eg:

interface "eth0" {
    prepend domain-name-servers 10.0.0.2;
}

Comments

[saiarcot895]

The DNS server nslookup is using is the one in your system, which is then using (or should be using) 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220. See this about 127.0.1.1.

[Mr.]

@saiarcot895, how do i verify that this is indeed the case? do i have to monitor the communication packets?

[Andrea Lazzarotto]

«nslookup never displays the right dns nameserver» It displays your own computer, which you configured to use OpenDNS... If this is not right, what would be the right one?

[Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy]

You could have simply added your dns to supersede domain-name-servers 208.67.222.222, 208.67.220.220; in dhclient.conf

[Apologician]

This question is different from the flagged duplicated question. The duplicate question doesn't have any answers that work for the OP of that question. He checkmarked what he thought was the best answer, but commented at the same time that the answer doesn't work. This OP's question is about the name server resolve. He showed his attempt for using configuring his /etc/resolvconf package. The answer provides the crutial step he mentioned. His changes needs to be in head, not base.

[Apologician]

The accepted answer in this question will work for DNS resolutions whether they are using DHCP or static configurations.

[Lars Viklund]

@MrRoth The comment in the head file does not apply to the file itself, but the composite /etc/resolv.conf that is generated by concatenating the fragments.

[argentum2f]

This one worked for me on kubuntu. All the other things I've tried did not. Not sure I understand the network config (services/etc) of my computer - but as long as this works for now I'm good.