I am looking for ways to update or change nameservers listed on remote linux machines via the command line.

For years I have attempted to do this with a package called 'netconfig' (these are fedora boxes) but netconfig has a bug that causes the nameservers not to be updated with the supplied info on the first attempt. Usually, and this is especially true when going from DHCP to static, a second netconfig attempt is required to get the nameservers to update.

I'd like to find a more reliable way to do this. Are there any command line tools that take a nameserver as an argument and updates resolv.conf accordingly? something along the lines of 'ifconfig' is what I am looking for, although I know ifconfig cannot be used to change nameservers.

In all the googling I have done the only command line related option that I could find for updating nameservers is to manually edit the resolve.conf file and this is not really an option for my application. I need to be able to issue a command to the system to get the job done.

Does anyone here have any good suggestions?

why would editing resolv.conf not be an option? do you mean the manual part of it? no need for it to be manual, just script it.
crude but gets the job done.

Manually editing config files is not an option because often I do not have command line access to the units (but I CAN issue single one-off commands to them). And when I do have cl access it is not reliable. Thus updating the name servers by issuing a single command is what is needed. As for your scripting option, I am prepared to go that route if I have to but I figured an ultra-basic aspect of networking like nameservers would already have a slew of tools supporting it. Something akin to ifconfig or even a working version of netconfig is what is needed. Is there nothing??

well i just gave you a one liner that does it...