how to get dnsmasq private nameserver to work with networkmanager?

Question

Just learning about networking.

I'm on Mint-18. Use network-manager. dnsmasq is enabled.

I would like addresses that end with a particular domain-name to get resolved through a private-nameserver.

When I add a private-nameserver using the server option to the dnsmasq configuration file, everything fails. I can't even resolve google.com:

> nslookup google.com
;; connection timed out; no servers could be reache

If I remove the server option and add the same private-nameserver to the top of \etc\resolve.conf, restart network-manager things work again and I can resolve private-hosts names.

> nslookup abcprivate.net
Server:     nn.nn.nn.nn
Address:    nn.nn.nn.nn#53

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:   abcprivate.net
Address: mm.mm.mm.mm

So I know that the private-nameserver is correct. So it must be the way I'm configuring dnsmasq.

Here is my config file

>cat /etc/NetworkManager/dnsmasq.d/dnsmasq.conf
server=/abcprivate.net/nn.nn.nn.nn

where abcprivate.net is the domain of the private network, and nn are digits.

Answer 1

It turned out that my settings were correct but they weren't being used.

>ps ax | grep dnsmasq
 1273 ?        S      0:00 /usr/sbin/dnsmasq --no-resolv --keep-in-foreground --no-hosts --bind-interfaces --pid-file=/var/run/NetworkManager/dnsmasq.pid --listen-address=127.0.1.1 --cache-size=0 --conf-file=/dev/null --proxy-dnssec --enable-dbus=org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.dnsmasq --conf-dir=/etc/NetworkManager/dnsmasq.d

As can be seen it wasn't using the conf file...I did a few other tests to make sure that was the case.

---

I did end up solving the problem, but I did it by:

• Disabling Network-manager dnsmasq plugin: comment out dns line in /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf
• Moving the /etc/NetworkManager/dnsmasq.d/dnsmasq.conf to /etc/dnsmasq.conf
• Adding a catch all name server to the /etc/dnsmasq.conf (see bellow for file listing)
• Adding the dnsmasq address to the top of the /etc/resolve.conf (by changing /etc/resolvconf/resolv.conf.d/head file...see bellow for file listing)
• Starting dnsmasq such that it won't read the resolve.conf: dnsmasq -d -R -q (I wanted to log the queries on the screen so that I could see what was going on).
• One I had everything working I encapsulated the dnsmasq in a systemD unit-file

---

$ cat /etc/dnsmasq.conf
cache-size=1000
listen-address=127.0.1.1
server=8.8.8.8
server=/abcprivate.net/nn.nn.nn.nn
cache-size=1000

$ cat /etc/resolvconf/resolv.conf.d/head    
nameserver 127.0.1.1

$ cat /etc/systemd/system/dnsmasq.service
[Unit]
Description=SystemD - Dnsmasq is a Domain Name System (DNS) forwarder
Requires=network-manager.service

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/dnsmasq -d -q -R

Answer 2

I believe dnsmasq can do what you want, but it also sounds like you've got some problems with dnsmasq.conf

You probably need this line uncommented in dnsmasq.conf:

resolv-file=/etc/dnsmasq.resolv

Then you need a file /etc/dnsmasq.resolv with some other nameserver in it. I've got this:

nameserver 8.8.8.8
nameserver 8.8.4.4
nameserver 4.3.2.1

Further, I think you need lines somewhat like these in /etc/dnsmasq.conf:

server=/.intranet/10.0.0.3
server=/0.0.10.in-addr.arpa/10.0.0.3
local=/.intranet/

The first one sets the IP address server for the ".intranet" domain. My original DSL modem used 10.0.0.0/24 addresses inside, so that's what I've got today. The 2nd line lets you look up hostnames from IP addresses. The third line tells dnsmasq to look up fully qualified names in ".intranet" domain in /etc/hosts, or from what clients register in dnsmasq DHCP. 10.0.0.3 is the IP address of the machine running dnsmasq.

To summarize: dnsmasq.resolv sets the IP address that dnsmasq will forward other names to. The server and local settings determine the IP address of a DNS server for a particular domain, and where to get addresses for names in that domain.