Make all *.local domains resolve to localhost

2016-02-02 2 minute read #dns #linux

It's time for my yearly blog post, so let's get started!

Some development environments use *.local-domains which point to localhost. Creating a hosts-entry for every single domain is not an elegant solution, so let's do something easier: let's use dnsmasq to resolve ALL .local-domains to localhost!

Tested on CentOS 7, but should work similarly for other Linuxes.

All commands assume you have root privileges. If you are not logged in as root, prepend sudo to all commands.

First, make sure dnsmasq is installed:

yum install dnsmasq

Ok, now we have to tell dnsmasq to listen for queries. Add the following line to /etc/dnsmasq.conf:

listen-address=127.0.0.1

Next, create a "zone file" for .local. Create a file /etc/dnsmasq.d/local and add the following:

address=/local/127.0.0.1

This tells dnsmasq to resolve queries to *.local to 127.0.0.1.

Now, start up dnsmasq. Also enable "autostart":

systemctl restart dnsmasq
systemctl enable dnsmasq

Ok, now that we set up a local DNS server, let's tell our DHCP client to actually use it. Add the following line to /etc/dhcp/dhclient.conf:

prepend domain-name-servers=127.0.0.1;

Last step: let the DHCP client apply the new settings:

dhclient

And that's it! Let's make a quick test:

$ ping foo.local
PING foo.local (127.0.0.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from localhost (127.0.0.1): icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.017 ms
64 bytes from localhost (127.0.0.1): icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.068 ms
# ...

Success!