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



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  con-
       sidered a trusted source of DNS information (e.g., DNSSEC AD-bit infor-
       mation will be returned unmodified from this source).

       If this file does not exist, only the name server on the local  machine
       will  be	 queried;  the domain name is determined from the hostname and
       the domain search path is constructed from the domain name.

       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 no name-
	      server 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.)

       domain Local domain name.
	      Most queries for names within this domain can  use  short	 names
	      relative to the local domain.  If set to '.', the root domain is
	      considered.  If no domain entry is present, the domain is deter-
	      mined  from  the	local hostname returned by gethostname(2); the
	      domain part is taken to  be  everything  after  the  first  '.'.
	      Finally,	if  the	 hostname  does not contain a domain part, the
	      root domain is assumed.

       search Search list for host-name lookup.
	      The search list is normally determined  from  the	 local	domain
	      name;  by default, it contains only the local domain name.  This
	      may be changed by listing the desired domain search path follow-
	      ing the search keyword with spaces or tabs separating the names.
	      Resolver queries having fewer than ndots 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 avail-
	      able for one of the domains.

	      The search list is currently limited to six domains with a total
	      of 256 characters.

       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	 sepa-
	      rated  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	 modi-
	      fied.  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  sin-
		     gle   timeout.   Measured	in  seconds,  the  default  is
		     RES_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
		     the ip6.arpa zone by default.  These options  are	avail-
		     able in glibc versions up to 2.24, where no-ip6-dotint is
		     the default.  Since ip6-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 per-
		     forms 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	 hard-
		     ware  mistakenly  sends  back  only one reply.  When that
		     happens the client system will sit and wait for the  sec-
		     ond  reply.  Turning this option on changes this behavior
		     so that if two requests from the same port are  not  han-
		     dled  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	causes
		     res_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'' 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.

       The  domain  and	 search keywords are mutually exclusive.  If more than
       one instance of these keywords is present, the last instance wins.

       The search keyword of a system'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'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.

FILES
       /etc/resolv.conf, <resolv.h>

SEE ALSO
       gethostbyname(3),    resolver(3),    host.conf(5),    hosts(5),	  nss-
       witch.conf(5), hostname(7), named(8)

       Name Server Operations Guide for BIND

COLOPHON
       This  page  is  part of release 4.10 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/.



4th Berkeley Distribution	  2017-03-13			RESOLV.CONF(5)