Another computer question...

[prpr]

To configure my DHCP to "tell its clients" about a local dnsmasq server running on a HDR-FOX means not telling them about a proper DNS.

But that's what you said you wanted. You can't tell them about another DNS as well as a 'proper' DNS (whatever that means).
You need to read up on how DNS works.

 

[Black Hole]

Clearly a local DNS server needs to pass on queries it can't answer to a proper server (by which I obviously mean the usual one out there on the Internet), but it was not clear from your previous answer that the dnsmasq running on HDR-FOX would be able to do that.

 

[EEPhil]

Think you're having DNS problems. Yesterday there was a fault with Vodafone and their DNS server wasn't responding. The internet was up - I could ping 8.8.8.8. What I couldn't do was set my phone's DNS server to be 8.8.8.8 because it won't accept IP addresses - it has to be dns.google - which requires it to access the IP address from another DNS server which wasn't responding. . What a useless system!

 

[Owen Smith]

To configure my DHCP to "tell its clients" about a local dnsmasq server running on a HDR-FOX means not telling them about a proper DNS.

You can tell dnsmasq to look anything else up in some other DNS server and work as a cache for those lookups. That's what most consumer grade routers do when they work as a DNS server relaying from your ISP's DNS, they just have an embedded instance of dnsmasq. If you run your own dnsmasq you get to add some local hostnames as well.

EDIT: I can't remember how to configure this. Ten years ago I had a Raspberry Pi doing this with dnsmasq, but my requirement for local DNS entries went away and I simplified things when I changed from ADSL to VDSL.

 

[HugeMaximum]

I use ".lan". I thought ".local" was reserved for mDNS use only.

My mistake. Edited my earlier message.

.internal seems like a good one - see...

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_domains#Special-use_domains
• https://www.theregister.com/off-pre...se-of-internal-domain-for-your-network/833326

Editing my earlier post to reflect this recommendation.

 

[HugeMaximum]

You can tell dnsmasq to look anything else up in some other DNS server and work as a cache for those lookups. That's what most consumer grade routers do when they work as a DNS server relaying from your ISP's DNS, they just have an embedded instance of dnsmasq. If you run your own dnsmasq you get to add some local hostnames as well.

EDIT: I can't remember how to configure this. Ten years ago I had a Raspberry Pi doing this with dnsmasq, but my requirement for local DNS entries went away and I simplified things when I changed from ADSL to VDSL.

If @Black Hole can enable command-line access by enabling telnet on his Netgear router (there appears a way to do this for some Netgear routers) - then could look to see if can manually configure dnsmasq - if indeed that is running. This will not be straightforward but may be worth a look at. I'm going to see if my Asus router (not Merlin firmware capable) can be configured via it's existing command-line access - as it appears it is indeed running dnsmasq.

 

[Owen Smith]

If @Black Hole can enable command-line access by enabling telnet on his Netgear router (there appears a way to do this for some Netgear routers) - then could look to see if can manually configure dnsmasq - if indeed that is running. This will not be straightforward but may be worth a look at. I'm going to see if my Asus router (not Merlin firmware capable) can be configured via it's existing command-line access - as it appears it is indeed running dnsmasq.

All consumer routers run dnsmasq when they run a DNS server, there aren't any alternatives really. Running a full unix 'bind' installation consumes too much resources.