1RESOLV.CONF(5)             Linux Programmer's Manual            RESOLV.CONF(5)
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NAME

6       resolv.conf - resolver configuration file
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SYNOPSIS

9       /etc/resolv.conf
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DESCRIPTION

12       The  resolver is a set of routines in the C library that provide access
13       to the Internet Domain Name System (DNS).  The  resolver  configuration
14       file  contains  information  that  is read by the resolver routines the
15       first time they are invoked by a process.  The file is designed  to  be
16       human readable and contains a list of keywords with values that provide
17       various types of resolver information.  The configuration file is  con‐
18       sidered a trusted source of DNS information (e.g., DNSSEC AD-bit infor‐
19       mation will be returned unmodified from this source).
20
21       If this file does not exist, only the name server on the local  machine
22       will  be  queried;  the domain name is determined from the hostname and
23       the domain search path is constructed from the domain name.
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25       The different configuration options are:
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27       nameserver Name server IP address
28              Internet address of a  name  server  that  the  resolver  should
29              query,  either  an  IPv4  address  (in dot notation), or an IPv6
30              address in colon (and possibly dot) notation as  per  RFC  2373.
31              Up  to  MAXNS  (currently 3, see <resolv.h>) name servers may be
32              listed, one per keyword.  If there  are  multiple  servers,  the
33              resolver  library queries them in the order listed.  If no name‐
34              server entries are present, the  default  is  to  use  the  name
35              server  on  the  local machine.  (The algorithm used is to try a
36              name server, and if the query times out, try the next, until out
37              of name servers, then repeat trying all the name servers until a
38              maximum number of retries are made.)
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40       domain Local domain name.
41              Most queries for names within this domain can  use  short  names
42              relative to the local domain.  If set to '.', the root domain is
43              considered.  If no domain entry is present, the domain is deter‐
44              mined  from  the  local hostname returned by gethostname(2); the
45              domain part is taken to  be  everything  after  the  first  '.'.
46              Finally,  if  the  hostname  does not contain a domain part, the
47              root domain is assumed.
48
49       search Search list for host-name lookup.
50              The search list is normally determined  from  the  local  domain
51              name;  by default, it contains only the local domain name.  This
52              may be changed by listing the desired domain search path follow‐
53              ing the search keyword with spaces or tabs separating the names.
54              Resolver queries having fewer than ndots dots (default is 1)  in
55              them  will  be attempted using each component of the search path
56              in turn until a match is found.  For environments with  multiple
57              subdomains  please  read  options ndots:n below to avoid man-in-
58              the-middle attacks and unnecessary  traffic  for  the  root-dns-
59              servers.  Note that this process may be slow and will generate a
60              lot of network traffic if the servers for the listed domains are
61              not local, and that queries will time out if no server is avail‐
62              able for one of the domains.
63
64              The search list is currently limited to six domains with a total
65              of 256 characters.
66
67       sortlist
68              This  option allows addresses returned by gethostbyname(3) to be
69              sorted.  A sortlist is specified  by  IP-address-netmask  pairs.
70              The  netmask  is optional and defaults to the natural netmask of
71              the net.  The IP address and optional network  pairs  are  sepa‐
72              rated  by slashes.  Up to 10 pairs may be specified.  Here is an
73              example:
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75                  sortlist 130.155.160.0/255.255.240.0 130.155.0.0
76
77       options
78              Options allows certain internal resolver variables to  be  modi‐
79              fied.  The syntax is
80
81                     options option ...
82
83              where option is one of the following:
84
85              debug  Sets  RES_DEBUG  in _res.options (effective only if glibc
86                     was built with debug support; see resolver(3)).
87
88              ndots:n
89                     Sets a threshold for the number of dots which must appear
90                     in  a name given to res_query(3) (see resolver(3)) before
91                     an initial absolute query will be made.  The default  for
92                     n is 1, meaning that if there are any dots in a name, the
93                     name will be tried first as an absolute name  before  any
94                     search  list  elements are appended to it.  The value for
95                     this option is silently capped to 15.
96
97              timeout:n
98                     Sets the amount of time the  resolver  will  wait  for  a
99                     response  from  a  remote name server before retrying the
100                     query via a different name server. This may  not  be  the
101                     total time taken by any resolver API call and there is no
102                     guarantee that a single resolver API call maps to a  sin‐
103                     gle   timeout.   Measured  in  seconds,  the  default  is
104                     RES_TIMEOUT (currently 5, see <resolv.h>).  The value for
105                     this option is silently capped to 30.
106
107              attempts:n
108                     Sets  the  number of times the resolver will send a query
109                     to its name servers before giving  up  and  returning  an
110                     error   to  the  calling  application.   The  default  is
111                     RES_DFLRETRY (currently 2, see  <resolv.h>).   The  value
112                     for this option is silently capped to 5.
113
114              rotate Sets RES_ROTATE in _res.options, which causes round-robin
115                     selection of name servers from among those listed.   This
116                     has  the  effect  of  spreading  the query load among all
117                     listed servers, rather than having all  clients  try  the
118                     first listed server first every time.
119
120              no-check-names
121                     Sets  RES_NOCHECKNAME in _res.options, which disables the
122                     modern BIND checking of incoming hostnames and mail names
123                     for invalid characters such as underscore (_), non-ASCII,
124                     or control characters.
125
126              inet6  Sets RES_USE_INET6 in _res.options.  This has the  effect
127                     of  trying  an  AAAA  query  before an A query inside the
128                     gethostbyname(3) function, and of mapping IPv4  responses
129                     in  IPv6 "tunneled form" if no AAAA records are found but
130                     an A record set exists.  Since glibc 2.25, this option is
131                     deprecated;   applications   should  use  getaddrinfo(3),
132                     rather than gethostbyname(3).
133
134              ip6-bytestring (since glibc 2.3.4)
135                     Sets RES_USEBSTRING in _res.options.  This causes reverse
136                     IPv6  lookups  to  be  made  using  the  bit-label format
137                     described in RFC 2673; if this option is not  set  (which
138                     is the default), then nibble format is used.  This option
139                     was removed in glibc 2.25, since it relied on a backward-
140                     incompatible DNS extension that was never deployed on the
141                     Internet.
142
143              ip6-dotint/no-ip6-dotint (glibc 2.3.4 to 2.24)
144                     Clear/set RES_NOIP6DOTINT  in  _res.options.   When  this
145                     option  is  clear  (ip6-dotint), reverse IPv6 lookups are
146                     made in the (deprecated) ip6.int zone; when  this  option
147                     is  set (no-ip6-dotint), reverse IPv6 lookups are made in
148                     the ip6.arpa zone by default.  These options  are  avail‐
149                     able in glibc versions up to 2.24, where no-ip6-dotint is
150                     the default.  Since ip6-dotint support long ago ceased to
151                     be  available on the Internet, these options were removed
152                     in glibc 2.25.
153
154              edns0 (since glibc 2.6)
155                     Sets RES_USE_EDNSO in _res.options.  This enables support
156                     for the DNS extensions described in RFC 2671.
157
158              single-request (since glibc 2.10)
159                     Sets RES_SNGLKUP in _res.options.  By default, glibc per‐
160                     forms IPv4 and IPv6 lookups  in  parallel  since  version
161                     2.9.   Some  appliance  DNS  servers  cannot handle these
162                     queries properly and make the requests  time  out.   This
163                     option  disables the behavior and makes glibc perform the
164                     IPv6 and IPv4 requests sequentially (at the cost of  some
165                     slowdown of the resolving process).
166
167              single-request-reopen (since glibc 2.9)
168                     Sets  RES_SNGLKUPREOP in _res.options.  The resolver uses
169                     the same socket for the A and AAAA requests.  Some  hard‐
170                     ware  mistakenly  sends  back  only one reply.  When that
171                     happens the client system will sit and wait for the  sec‐
172                     ond  reply.  Turning this option on changes this behavior
173                     so that if two requests from the same port are  not  han‐
174                     dled  correctly  it  will close the socket and open a new
175                     one before sending the second request.
176
177              no-tld-query (since glibc 2.14)
178                     Sets RES_NOTLDQUERY in _res.options.  This option  causes
179                     res_nsearch()  to  not  attempt to resolve an unqualified
180                     name as if it were a top level domain (TLD).  This option
181                     can cause problems if the site has ``localhost'' as a TLD
182                     rather than having localhost on one or more  elements  of
183                     the  search  list.   This option has no effect if neither
184                     RES_DEFNAMES or RES_DNSRCH is set.
185
186              use-vc (since glibc 2.14)
187                     Sets RES_USEVC in _res.options.  This option  forces  the
188                     use of TCP for DNS resolutions.
189
190       The  domain  and  search keywords are mutually exclusive.  If more than
191       one instance of these keywords is present, the last instance wins.
192
193       The search keyword of a system's resolv.conf file can be overridden  on
194       a  per-process basis by setting the environment variable LOCALDOMAIN to
195       a space-separated list of search domains.
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197       The options keyword of a system's resolv.conf file can be amended on  a
198       per-process  basis by setting the environment variable RES_OPTIONS to a
199       space-separated list of  resolver  options  as  explained  above  under
200       options.
201
202       The  keyword  and  value  must appear on a single line, and the keyword
203       (e.g., nameserver) must start the line.  The value follows the keyword,
204       separated by white space.
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206       Lines  that  contain a semicolon (;) or hash character (#) in the first
207       column are treated as comments.
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FILES

210       /etc/resolv.conf, <resolv.h>
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SEE ALSO

213       gethostbyname(3),    resolver(3),    host.conf(5),    hosts(5),    nss‐
214       witch.conf(5), hostname(7), named(8)
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216       Name Server Operations Guide for BIND
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COLOPHON

219       This  page  is  part of release 4.16 of the Linux man-pages project.  A
220       description of the project, information about reporting bugs,  and  the
221       latest     version     of     this    page,    can    be    found    at
222       https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.
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2264th Berkeley Distribution         2017-09-15                    RESOLV.CONF(5)
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