Trying change my DNS in Linuxmint

Bala451987 · 09-19-2023, 03:13 AM

I recently changed my DNS settings to Google DNS on my Linuxmint. Initially, I made the changes through the GUI in the Advanced Networking Configuration, and everything seemed to be configured correctly. However, when I checked the `resolv.conf` file, it was still using the existing DNS server. To resolve this issue, I tried a few solutions. First, I created a tail file inside `resolv.conf`, and then I downloaded the 'resolvconf' application. After these steps, I checked the DNS settings via the terminal using the command `nmcli dev show | grep DNS`, and it appeared to have changed successfully.

I decided to make these DNS changes because I was experiencing issues accessing Obsidian community plugins with my previous DNS settings. When I contacted Obsidian support, they suggested that this might be the cause of the DNS problem from the user from India. Now, I would like to confirm if I made any mistakes during this process as I am still unable to access the plugins within Obsidian.

jayjwa · 09-19-2023, 12:05 PM

I don't use Linuxmint nor NM so beware...

You can set the DNS in several places, depending on system setup: /etc/resolv.conf, or /etc/resolvconf.conf. Additionally, if you get your host params via DHCP, DHCP settings will often clobber what you set in local files. If resolvconf is setting it, you'll see

Code:

head -n 1 /etc/resolv.conf
# Generated by resolvconf

Code:

## Configuration for resolvconf(8)
## See resolvconf.conf(5) for details
## These commands must be shell commands because this script is 
## sourced by resolvconf itself.
resolv_conf=/etc/resolv.conf

# If you run a local name server, you should uncomment the below line and
# configure your subscribers configuration files below.
#name_servers=127.0.0.1

# Add prefered nameservers.
name_servers="208.67.222.222 208.67.222.220"

You can tell your DHCP server to ignore sent settings (/etc/dhcpcd.conf)

Code:

# Don't use our flakey ISP DNS servers
# Use OpenDNS's
static domain_name_servers=208.67.222.222 208.67.222.220 2620:0:ccc::2 2620:0:ccd::2

Evidently my distro started using resolvconf. I question the sanity of using a configuration file (resolvconf.conf) to tools (resolvconf) to write configuration files (resolv.conf) via tools (dhcpcd) to write configuration of tools (the nsswitch "host" database) but I digress...

NM might also have a way of setting some of these.