Section (5) resolv.conf
Name
resolv.conf — resolver configuration file
Synopsis
/etc/resolv.conf
DESCRIPTION
The resolver
is a set of
routines in the C library that provide access to the Internet
Domain Name System (DNS). The resolver configuration file
contains information that is read by the resolver routines
the first time they are invoked by a process. The file is
designed to be human readable and contains a list of keywords
with values that provide various types of resolver
information. The configuration file is considered a trusted
source of DNS information (e.g., DNSSEC AD-bit information
will be returned unmodified from this source).
If this file does not exist, only the name server on the local machine will be queried, and the search list contains the local domain name determined from the hostname.
The different configuration options are:
nameserver
Name server IP address-
Internet address of a name server that the resolver should query, either an IPv4 address (in dot notation), or an IPv6 address in colon (and possibly dot) notation as per RFC 2373. Up to
MAXNS
(currently 3, see<
resolv.h
>
name servers may be listed, one per keyword. If there are multiple servers, the resolver library queries them in the order listed. If nonameserver
entries are present, the default is to use the name server on the local machine. (The algorithm used is to try a name server, and if the query times out, try the next, until out of name servers, then repeat trying all the name servers until a maximum number of retries are made.) search
Search list for host-name lookup.-
By default, the search list contains one entry, the local domain name. It is determined from the local hostname returned by gethostname(2); the local domain name is taken to be everything after the first _zsingle_quotesz_._zsingle_quotesz_. Finally, if the hostname does not contain a _zsingle_quotesz_._zsingle_quotesz_, the root domain is assumed as the local domain name.
This may be changed by listing the desired domain search path following the
search
keyword with spaces or tabs separating the names. Resolver queries having fewer thanndots
dots (default is 1) in them will be attempted using each component of the search path in turn until a match is found. For environments with multiple subdomains please read options ndots:n
below to avoid man-in-the-middle attacks and unnecessary traffic for the root-dns-servers. Note that this process may be slow and will generate a lot of network traffic if the servers for the listed domains are not local, and that queries will time out if no server is available for one of the domains.If there are multiple
search
directives, only the search list from the last instance is used.In glibc 2.25 and earlier, the search list is limited to six domains with a total of 256 characters. Since glibc 2.26, the search list is unlimited.
The
domain
directive is an obsolete name for thesearch
directive that handles one search list entry only. sortlist
-
This option allows addresses returned by gethostbyname(3) to be sorted. A sortlist is specified by IP-address-netmask pairs. The netmask is optional and defaults to the natural netmask of the net. The IP address and optional network pairs are separated by slashes. Up to 10 pairs may be specified. Here is an example:
sortlist 130.155.160.0/255.255.240.0 130.155.0.0
options
-
Options allows certain internal resolver variables to be modified. The syntax is
- options option ...
where
option
is one of the following:debug
-
Sets
RES_DEBUG
in_res.options
(effective only if glibc was built with debug support; see resolver(3)). ndots:
n
-
Sets a threshold for the number of dots which must appear in a name given to res_query(3) (see resolver(3)) before an initial absolute query will be made. The default for
n
is 1, meaning that if there are any dots in a name, the name will be tried first as an absolute name before any search list elements are appended to it. The value for this option is silently capped to 15. timeout:
n
-
Sets the amount of time the resolver will wait for a response from a remote name server before retrying the query via a different name server. This may
not
be the total time taken by any resolver API call and there is no guarantee that a single resolver API call maps to a single timeout. Measured in seconds, the default isRES_TIMEOUT
(currently 5, see<
resolv.h
>
The value for this option is silently capped to 30. attempts:
n
-
Sets the number of times the resolver will send a query to its name servers before giving up and returning an error to the calling application. The default is
RES_DFLRETRY
(currently 2, see<
resolv.h
>
The value for this option is silently capped to 5. - rotate
-
Sets
RES_ROTATE
in_res.options
, which causes round-robin selection of name servers from among those listed. This has the effect of spreading the query load among all listed servers, rather than having all clients try the first listed server first every time. - no−check−names
-
Sets
RES_NOCHECKNAME
in_res.options
, which disables the modern BIND checking of incoming hostnames and mail names for invalid characters such as underscore (_), non-ASCII, or control characters. - inet6
-
Sets
RES_USE_INET6
in_res.options
. This has the effect of trying an AAAA query before an A query inside the gethostbyname(3) function, and of mapping IPv4 responses in IPv6 tunneled form if no AAAA records are found but an A record set exists. Since glibc 2.25, this option is deprecated; applications should use getaddrinfo(3), rather than gethostbyname(3). ip6−bytestring
(since glibc 2.3.4)-
Sets
RES_USEBSTRING
in_res.options
. This causes reverse IPv6 lookups to be made using the bit-label format described in RFC 2673; if this option is not set (which is the default), then nibble format is used. This option was removed in glibc 2.25, since it relied on a backward-incompatible DNS extension that was never deployed on the Internet. ip6−dotint/no−ip6−dotint
(glibc 2.3.4 to 2.24
)-
Clear/set
RES_NOIP6DOTINT
in_res.options
. When this option is clear (ip6−dotint
), reverse IPv6 lookups are made in the (deprecated)ip6.int
zone; when this option is set (no−ip6−dotint
), reverse IPv6 lookups are made in theip6.arpa
zone by default. These options are available in glibc versions up to 2.24, whereno-ip6-dotint
is the default. Sinceip6−dotint
support long ago ceased to be available on the Internet, these options were removed in glibc 2.25. edns0
(since glibc 2.6)-
Sets
RES_USE_EDNSO
in_res.options
. This enables support for the DNS extensions described in RFC 2671. single−request
(since glibc 2.10)-
Sets
RES_SNGLKUP
in_res.options
. By default, glibc performs IPv4 and IPv6 lookups in parallel since version 2.9. Some appliance DNS servers cannot handle these queries properly and make the requests time out. This option disables the behavior and makes glibc perform the IPv6 and IPv4 requests sequentially (at the cost of some slowdown of the resolving process). single−request−reopen
(since glibc 2.9)-
Sets
RES_SNGLKUPREOP
in_res.options
. The resolver uses the same socket for the A and AAAA requests. Some hardware mistakenly sends back only one reply. When that happens the client system will sit and wait for the second reply. Turning this option on changes this behavior so that if two requests from the same port are not handled correctly it will close the socket and open a new one before sending the second request. no−tld−query
(since glibc 2.14)-
Sets
RES_NOTLDQUERY
in_res.options
. This option causesres_nsearch
() to not attempt to resolve an unqualified name as if it were a top level domain (TLD). This option can cause problems if the site has ``localhost_zsingle_quotesz__zsingle_quotesz_ as a TLD rather than having localhost on one or more elements of the search list. This option has no effect if neither RES_DEFNAMES or RES_DNSRCH is set. use−vc
(since glibc 2.14)-
Sets
RES_USEVC
in_res.options
. This option forces the use of TCP for DNS resolutions. no−reload
(since glibc 2.26)-
Sets
RES_NORELOAD
in_res.options
. This option disables automatic reloading of a changed configuration file.
The search
keyword of a system_zsingle_quotesz_s resolv.conf
file can be
overridden on a per-process basis by setting the environment
variable LOCALDOMAIN
to a
space-separated list of search domains.
The options
keyword of a system_zsingle_quotesz_s resolv.conf
file can be
amended on a per-process basis by setting the environment
variable RES_OPTIONS
to a
space-separated list of resolver options as explained above
under options
.
The keyword and value must appear on a single line, and
the keyword (e.g., nameserver
) must start the
line. The value follows the keyword, separated by white
space.
Lines that contain a semicolon (;) or hash character (#) in the first column are treated as comments.
SEE ALSO
gethostbyname(3), resolver(3), host.conf(5), hosts(5), nsswitch.conf(5), hostname(7), named(8)
Name Server Operations Guide for BIND
COLOPHON
This page is part of release 5.04 of the Linux man-pages
project. A
description of the project, information about reporting bugs,
and the latest version of this page, can be found at
https://www.kernel.org/doc/man−pages/.
Copyright (c) 1986 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. %%%LICENSE_START(PERMISSIVE_MISC) Redistribution and use in source and binary forms are permitted provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are duplicated in all such forms and that any documentation, advertising materials, and other materials related to such distribution and use acknowledge that the software was developed by the University of California, Berkeley. The name of the University may not be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission. THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED ``AS IS_zsingle_quotesz__zsingle_quotesz_ AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. %%%LICENSE_END (#)resolver.5 5.9 (Berkeley) 12/14/89 $Id: resolver.5,v 8.6 1999/05/21 00:01:02 vixie Exp $ Added ndots remark by Bernhard R. Link - debian bug #182886 |