Howdy all,

I seem to have this problem with every version of Fedora and each time the solution seems a little different. How can I input multiple DNS search paths? The built-in/included interface for editing the network properties is severely lacking and doesn't have the option to update much of anything including the DNS search path.

I managed to find the old system-config-network and put the DNS search paths in there separated by commas, semicolons or spaces the paths disappear after the service is restarted.

I am using DhCP and I don't remember the procedure for editing the dhcp scripts to automatically add the search paths. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

On a side note. I have never liked/enjoyed RHEL/Fedoras implementation of Network Manager. For distros that are trying to make everything GUI based, they are doing a horrible job of presenting the user with working efficient GUI programs.

Thanks
Chris

if this is a linux based dhcpd server, then just edit /etc/dhpc/dhcpd.conf

subnet 192.168.7.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
option routers 192.168.7.1;
option domain-name-servers 4.2.2.2, 4.3.3.3 ;
range 192.168.7.200 192.168.7.250 ;
max-lease-time 300;


use the comma to separate the DNS Servers

I don't like NetworkManager - the only time it ever stays on one of my Redhat Based Systems is if that system its on is using WIFI... Other than that I just remove it or disable it.

chkconfig NetworkManager off

and just use the Network service

system-config-network or manually edit the files...

Thanks for the feedback but i cannot edit the dhcp server. I am mrrely a client on a larger network. Unfortunately there are a few hundred suffixes company wide so they dont push it via dhcp.

I just need to configure my single client

Thanks

You have to be aware that, at a system level, this may not do what you want. However, as it is what you ask for, you can edit /etc/resolv.conf to have multiple resolvers

• the max number is set in resolv.h (currently 3, apparently, used to be 2...you may think that 3 is not enough, but wait 'till you find out how much that can decrease your performance)
• don't think that this is good, necessarily; to use the resolver number n, (n-1) resolvers must have timed out, and if several have timed out, your performance will be poor (but it should still work....eventually)
• and there are facilities for managing a 'stack' of resolv.conf configuartions. These are, or can be, used by ppp, dhcp, nm, wicd (I think), so what you see and edit when networking is not running can be different from what is active when networking is running, and this can be confusing. And, it can lead to all sorts of strange confusions when your nice, new, changes mysteriously disappear.

...and, there are better ways....

...can't comment on Fedora's efforts in this area, but there are other distros...

The easiest (may not work in your case, but if it does work, it IS the easiest) is to have as your first DNS server a DNS server that is reliable and fast.

Assuming that doesn't work for you, you could consider running your own caching nameserver. Something like DNSMasq, MaraDNS or DJBDNS could work for you. DNSMasq is nice, but is also a DHCP server, and, in your case, you'd have to be careful to turn the DHCP part off, as running two DHCP servers on one network segment is always going to be, err, interesting (and I do mean interesting in a bad way).

In particular, DNSMasq is capable of querying upstream DNS servers in parallel, rather than waiting for a timeout, so, potentially, you get two advantages -parallel querying AND caching.

Thanks for all the suggestions. One of the reasons why the majority of people haven't grasped Linux as a desktop OS is that it really takes a lot of patience and troubleshooting to get even the easiest of things to work.

The solution that worked for me was to specify PEERDNS=no in the interface config file. This allowed me to edit the /etc/resolv.conf and not have to worry about Network Manager overwriting it. Hope this helps someone else.

Thanks,