If listen-address is used in dnsmasq.conf, then it restricts dnsmasq to listen only on that address/interface.

With

listen-address = 127.0.0.1

Other machines on the LAN cannot connect. This is what LeoPap has in his config.

To allow other LAN boxes to connect to dnsmasq, the options are (1) change the listen-address to the LAN IP, or (2) remove the listen-address line entirely -- in which case dnsmasq listens on ALL interfaces.

Either approach is viable. I opted for the former. In retrospect it may have been simpler to have said, "put a # at the beginning on the 'listen-address' line and restart dnsmasq."

Sorry, but wrong. Have a look at my config file posted earlier in the thread, it is working fine for me, connecting from different machines (Linux and Windows) to that server.

This is what the man-page of dnsmasq has to say about that:So, if you have the interface specified in the config file giving the value of 127.0.0.1 to the listen-address option is not only totally OK, but in this case enables wanted behavior.

I did not see any use of --interface in the config file originally posted by LeoPap, only --listen-address.

Rereading I see he copied your config, including the --interface option:

If "interface=etho" isn't simply a typo here on the board, perhaps it's the problem. Should be eth0.

Nice catch, this may be the problem, if the typo is also in the config file. Either this or the running firewall, I would assume.

Thank you guys sooo much!
Finally the problem solved!! The solutions was to open port 53 on iptables!!

Thnako you very much for your help all this time. I really appreciate it!


Cheers,
Leo

Hello guys,

After using the caching server for 2 days on my windows pc's, i have noticed that the speed of browsing didn't have a dramatically change...Maybe it is a bit better than it was previously but not what i was expected...

Is there anything else i can do in order to get faster browsing?
Also is there any way to see if the cache-size has been reduced??

Cheers,
Leo

Browsing of course only becomes faster for things that are cached, for example if you visit a site that you have visited before. And of course, as unSpawn stated already, you restarting the machine or dnsmasq will clear the cache, so that is a no-go. I use it to speed up my different machines (a machine has not look up DNS info that I have already visited on a different machine), especially when network load is high, and you really can see the difference. I can't say anything about performance on single machines that are used on home networks without other machines interfering.
If you often visit the same sites with somewhat static content it may help to use a caching proxy server, like Polipo (again, not really data here for that with single machines on single used home networks), that gave me a serious speed up, again especially when network load is high.

I check the log file of dnsmasq and here are the results.



[root@localhost ~]# cat /var/log/dnsmasq.log
Jan 3 09:10:09 dnsmasq[1601]: started, version 2.48 cachesize 1000
Jan 3 09:10:09 dnsmasq[1601]: compile time options: IPv6 GNU-getopt DBus no-I18 N DHCP TFTP
Jan 3 09:10:09 dnsmasq[1601]: cleared cache
Jan 3 09:10:09 dnsmasq[1601]: failed to read /etc/resolv.dnsmasq: No such file or directory
Jan 3 09:21:47 dnsmasq[1601]: exiting on receipt of SIGTERM
Jan 3 09:21:53 dnsmasq[1627]: started, version 2.48 cachesize 1000
Jan 3 09:21:53 dnsmasq[1627]: compile time options: IPv6 GNU-getopt DBus no-I18 N DHCP TFTP
Jan 3 09:21:53 dnsmasq[1627]: cleared cache
Jan 3 09:21:53 dnsmasq[1627]: failed to read /etc/resolv.dnsmasq: No such file or directory
Jan 3 09:22:09 dnsmasq[1627]: exiting on receipt of SIGTERM
Jan 3 09:22:09 dnsmasq[1653]: started, version 2.48 cachesize 1000
Jan 3 09:22:09 dnsmasq[1653]: compile time options: IPv6 GNU-getopt DBus no-I18 N DHCP TFTP
Jan 3 09:22:09 dnsmasq[1653]: cleared cache
Jan 3 09:22:09 dnsmasq[1653]: failed to read /etc/resolv.dnsmasq: No such file or directory
Jan 4 12:34:21 dnsmasq[1653]: exiting on receipt of SIGTERM
Jan 4 12:35:06 dnsmasq[1041]: started, version 2.48 cachesize 1000
Jan 4 12:35:06 dnsmasq[1041]: compile time options: IPv6 GNU-getopt DBus no-I18 N DHCP TFTP
Jan 4 12:35:06 dnsmasq[1041]: cleared cache
Jan 4 12:35:06 dnsmasq[1041]: failed to read /etc/resolv.dnsmasq: No such file or directory
Jan 7 08:33:25 dnsmasq[1041]: exiting on receipt of SIGTERM


[root@localhost ~]# cat /etc/resolv.dnsmasq
nameserver 8.8.8.8
nameserver 208.67.222.222


i can see that the daemon can't read the resolv.dnsmasq. Maybe this has affect my browsing speed.

But why? With the cat command i can see that the file exists!!

Possibly a permission issue? I can't really say. But what I can see is that your dnsmasq is restarted at least once a day, which will clear the cache and render it more or less useless. It may be that this behavior is caused by the inability to read resolv.dnsmasq, but the real question is: When dnsmasq can't resolve DNS queries on your server because it can't access the file with the nameserver addresses, how can it possibly ever have worked?

I really don't know.. I am too confused now! i have change the dns server at my windows pc ( i add the ip of the caching server ) and i had internet connection!! How can this be possible?

When i install dnsmasq, i also type these commands:
groupadd -r dnsmasq
useradd -r -g dnsmasq dnsmasq

How can i be sure that it is not a permission issue?

Also if you see the log file stops at 7 of January..Why i don't have any data from 8 and 9 of January??

Good question. Do you get log entries when you manually restart dnsmasq?

i restart the dnsmasq manually, but still on the /var/log/dnsmasq.log the last log entry is on 7 January..

Also i reboot the server and still no entry on the log file...

But you can use it from your client or doesn't it work? Also, do you still have the line about the log location in your config file?

The client ( Windows PC) has as dns the ip of the caching server and they had internet connection!!

Here is the configuration:


[root@localhost ~]# cat /etc/dnsmasq.conf
interface=eth0
listen-address=127.0.0.1
port=53
bind-interfaces
user=dnsmasq
group=dnsmasq
pid-file=/var/run/dnsmasq.pid
domain-needed
bogus-priv
dns-forward-max=150
cache-size=10000
neg-ttl=600
resolv-file=/etc/resolv.dnsmasq

You are missing the line(and I seem to have failed in copy and paste, this line is the last in my config file), this is why you don't have anything in your log file, dnsmasq is just not logging.