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I was tinkering with my resolv.conf file. I logged in to root and made the changes to it there. All of a sudden, I cannot get through to any websites using my Firefox browser.

The file looks like this

#Generated by NetworkManager
nameserver 8.8.8.8
nameserver 8.8.4.4
nameserver 192.168.1.1

Can someone please help me fix this!

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  • If you broke the resolv.conf file, issuing a service NetworkManager restart should fix the problem. NetworkManager generates the resolv.conf if you have NM installed, which is what it looks like to me. – sparticvs Dec 13 '13 at 21:32
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Applications read /etc/resolv.conf when they start. If you've changed that file, you may need to restart applications that access the network. Restart Firefox.

To avoid this inconvenience, you can run a local DNS caching proxy, put nameserver 127.0.0.1 in your /etc/resolv.conf to point applications at your proxy, and configure your proxy however you like. This has the added benefit of making DNS requests faster. Dnsmasq is a popular choice. See No DNS on Debian wifi after unplugging the DNS cable and Process calling getaddrinfo() at boot gets permanently stuck with bad /etc/resolv.conf? for examples.

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  • Thanks. Your solution worked. I changed my resolv.conf to point to 127.0.0.1 and getting dnsmasq to point to a custom nameserver file fixed the problem. – zam Dec 17 '13 at 15:16
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Rebooting would be the simplest way to have the resolv.conf file automatically fixed.

As a couple of comments rightly state, there are definitely more subtle ways to have the file reconstructed, however, they are distribution dependent:

You might check which one match yours, if any:

service network-manager restart      # Debian/Ubuntu/Mint
/etc/init.d/network restart          # Suse
/sbin/service NetworkManager restart # RedHat/Fedora
/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 restart           # Slackware
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  • 2
    I would say that even restarting the network interface in question ought to clear things up. – Joseph R. Dec 13 '13 at 21:28
  • That is indeed the side effect of rebooting I was suggesting under the lines. The idea is people are much more likely to know how to reboot than how to restart an interface. – jlliagre Dec 13 '13 at 22:01

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