SEE UPDATE BELOW!
I also enjoy using Dnsmasq on my local machine, and I had this problem
too. Here is the solution:
From man 5 resolver
:
The configuration for a particular client may be read from a file
having the format described in this man page. These are at present
located by the system in the /etc/resolv.conf file and in the files
found in the /etc/resolver directory.
/etc/resolver/
is not present by default; you must create it yourself.
Also from the man page:
domain
Domain name associated with this resolver configuration. This
option is normally not required by the Mac OS X DNS search system
when the resolver configuration is read from a file in the
/etc/resolver directory. In that case the file name is used as the
domain name.
So if you wanted all dns queries for the top level domain of dev
to be
routed to the local nameserver, you would:
# mkdir /etc/resolver
# echo 'nameserver 127.0.0.1' > /etc/resolver/dev
configd
does not alter files in /etc/resolver/
, so this setting will
persist through network changes and reboots.
UPDATE 17 July 2012
Unfortunately, as of OS X Lion, the top resolver (as shown by scutil
--dns
) disappears when no interfaces are active:
# scutil --dns # Online
DNS configuration
resolver #1
nameserver[0] : 127.0.0.1
...
resolver #8
domain : dev
nameserver[0] : 127.0.0.1
# scutil --dns # Offline
DNS configuration
resolver #1
...
resolver #8
domain : dev
nameserver[0] : 127.0.0.1
Notice that resolver #1 is empty, but that the /etc/resolver derived
nameserver entry remains.
It turns out that since you can specify the resolver domain directly in
the /etc/resolver/ file, specifying the special Internet root domain .
causes the creation of a global resolver entry that looks like:
resolver #8
nameserver[0] : 127.0.0.1
Now all DNS queries are routed to localhost, even when offline.
Of course, you will still have to resolve your chosen domains as
127.0.0.1 using something like dnsmasq's --address option:
# dnsmasq --address=/dev/127.0.0.1
In summary:
- Set all your network interface dns servers to 127.0.0.1:
networksetup -setdnsservers Ethernet 127.0.0.1
networksetup -setdnsservers Wi-Fi 127.0.0.1
...
- Create a file /etc/resolver/whatever:
nameserver 127.0.0.1
domain .
- Set up a local DNS server and be happy.
cf. http://opensource.apple.com/source/configd/configd-395.11/dnsinfo/dnsinfo_flatfile.c