this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2023
145 points (89.6% liked)

Linux

48333 readers
367 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I recently tried to enable system-wide DNS over https on Fedora. To do so I had to to some research and found out how comfusing it is for the average user (and even experienced users) to change the settings. In fact there are multiple backends messing with system DNS at the same time.

Most major Linux distributions use systemd-resolved for DNS but there is no utility for changing its configuration.

The average user would still try to change DNS settings by editing /etc/relov.conf (which is overwritten and will not survive reboots) or changing settings in Network Manager.

Based on documentation of systemd-resolved, the standard way of adding custom DNS servers is putting so-called 'drop-in' files in /etc/systemd/resolved.conf.d directory, especially when you want to use DNS-over-TLS or DNS-over-https.

Modern browsers use their buit-in DNS settings which adds to the confusion.

I think this is one area that Linux needs more work and more standardization.

How do you think it should be fixed?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (5 children)

You haven't used Ubuntu Server... The resolv.conf is managed by the network manager (NetworkManager if I recall correctly). But if you configure the DNS in NM it won't survive the reboot because there is another layer on top, cloudinit.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Cloud-init is fairly well documented:

https://cloudinit.readthedocs.io/en/latest/reference/network-config-format-v2.html#nameservers-mapping

But if you do not need it (and if you're configuring DNS by hand, it doesn't sound like you do), you can disable it entirely:

https://cloudinit.readthedocs.io/en/latest/howto/disable_cloud_init.html

resolv.conf itself should be managed by systemd-resolved on any modern Ubuntu Server release. And that service will use the DNS settings provided by netplan.

With cloud-init disabled, you should have the freedom to create/edit configuration files in /etc/netplan and apply changes with netplan apply.

load more comments (4 replies)