4/6/23, 2:23 PM How to Setup a DNS/DHCP Server Using dnsmasq on CentOS/RHEL 8/7

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How to Setup a DNS/DHCP Server

Using dnsmasq on CentOS/RHEL 8/7
Aaron Kili November 1, 2019 CentOS, DHCP, DNS, RedHat 10 Comments

A Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) server dynamically assigns IP

addresses and other network configuration parameters to each device on a network. A
DNS forwarder on a LAN forwards DNS queries for non-local domain names to
upstream DNS servers (outside that network). A DNS caching server answers
recursive requests from clients so that the DNS query can be resolved faster, thus
Learn
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sites.

dnsmasq is a lightweight, easy to configure DNS forwarder, DHCP server software

and router advertisement subsystem for small networks. Dnsmasq supports Linux,
*BSD, Mac OS X as well as Android.

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4/6/23, 2:23 PM How to Setup a DNS/DHCP Server Using dnsmasq on CentOS/RHEL 8/7

It features a DNS subsystem that provides a local DNS server for the network, with
forwarding of all query types to upstream recursive DNS servers and caching of
common record types. The DHCP subsystem supports DHCPv4, DHCPv6, BOOTP,
PXE, and a TFTP server. And the router advertisement subsystem supports basic
autoconfiguration for IPv6 hosts.

In this article, we will walk you through the instructions on how to install and setup
DNS/DHCP Server Using dnsmasq on CentOS/RHEL 8/7 distributions.

Installing dnsmasq in CentOS and RHEL Linux

1. The dnsmasq package is available in the default repositories and can be easily
installed using the YUM package manager as shown.

# yum install dnsmasq

Install dnsmasq in CentOS

2. Once the dnsmasq package installation is complete, you need to start the dnsmasq
service for now and enable it to automatically start at system boot. Besides, check its

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status to ensure that it is up and running using the following systemctl commands.

# systemctl start dnsmasq

# systemctl enable dnsmasq
# systemctl status dnsmasq

Start and Verify dnsmasq Status

Configuring dnsmasq Server in CentOS and RHEL

Linux
3. The dnsmasq server can be configured via the /etc/dnsmasq.conf file (which
contains well commented and explained options), and user-defined configuration files
can also be added in the /etc/dnsmasq.d directory.

DNS is enabled by default, so before making any changes, make sure to create a
backup of /etc/dnsmasq.conf file.

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# cp /etc/dnsmasq.conf /etc/dnsmasq.conf.orig

4. Now open the /etc/dnsmasq.conf file using your favorite text-based editor and make
the following suggested configuration settings.

# vi /etc/dnsmasq.conf

The listen-address the option is used to set the IP address, where dnsmasq will
listen on. To use your CentOS/RHEL server to listen for DHCP and DNS requests on
the LAN, set the listen-address option to its LAN IP addresses (remember to
include 127.0.0.1) as shown. Note that the server IP must be static.

listen-address=::1,127.0.0.1,192.168.56.10

Related to the above, you can restrict the interface dnsmasq listens on using the
interface option (add more lines for more than one interface).

interface=eth0

5. If you want to have a domain (which you can set as shown next) automatically
added to simple names in a hosts-file, uncomment the expand-hosts option.

expand-hosts

6. To set the domain for dnsmasq, which means DHCP clients will have fully qualified
domain names as long as the set domain is matched, and sets the “domain” DHCP

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option for all clients.

domain=tecmint.lan

7. Next, also define the upstream DNS server for non-local domains using the server
option (in the form server=dns_server_ip) as shown.

# Google's nameservers
server=8.8.8.8
server=8.8.4.4

8. Then you can force your local domain to an IP address(es) using the address option
as shown.

address=/tecmint.lan/127.0.0.1
address=/tecmint.lan/192.168.56.10

9. Save the file and check the configuration file syntax for errors as shown.

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# dnsmasq --test

Check dnsmasq Configuration

Configuring dnsmasq with /etc/resolv.conf File

10. In this step, you need to make all queries to be sent to dnsmasq by adding the
localhost addresses as the only nameservers in /etc/resolv.conf file.

# vi /etc/resolv.conf

Set Localhost Address in /etc/resolv.conf File

11. The /etc/resolv.conf file is maintained by a local daemon especially the

NetworkManager, therefore any user-made changes will be overwritten. To prevent
this, write-protect it by setting the immutable file attribute (disabling write access to
the file) using the chattr command as shown.

# chattr +i /etc/resolv.conf
# lsattr /etc/resolv.conf

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Set File Attribute

Defining DNS Hosts and Names

12. The Dnsmasq reads all the DNS hosts and names from the /etc/hosts file, so add
your DNS hosts IP addresses and name pairs as shown.

127.0.0.1 dnsmasq
192.168.56.10 dnsmasq
192.168.56.1 gateway
192.168.56.100 maas-controller
192.168.56.20 nagios
192.168.56.25 webserver1

Add DNS hosts IP addresses

Important: Local DNS names can also be defined by importing names from the DHCP
subsystem, or by the configuration of a wide range of useful record types.

13. To apply the above changes, restart the dnsmasq service as shown.

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# systemctl restart dnsmasq

14. If you have the firewalld service running, you need to open DNS and DHCP
services in the firewall configuration, to allow requests from hosts on your LAN to pass
to the dnsmasq server.

# firewall-cmd --add-service=dns --permanent

# firewall-cmd --add-service=dhcp --permanent
# firewall-cmd --reload

Testing Local DNS

15. To test if the local DNS server or forwarding is working fine, you need to use tools
such as dig or nslookup for performing DNS queries. These tools are provided by the
bind-utils package which may not come pre-installed on CentOS/RHEL 8, but you can
install it as shown.

# yum install bind-utils

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16. Once you have installed, you can run a simple query on your local domain as
shown.

# dig tecmint.lan
OR
# nslookup tecmint.lan

Query Local Domain

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17. You can also try to query the FQDN of one of the servers.

# dig webserver1.tecmint.lan
OR
# nslookup webserver1.tecmint.lan

Query Domain DNS

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18. To test a reverse IP lookup, run a similar command.

# dig -x 192.168.56.25
OR
# nslookup 192.168.56.25

Query Reverse IP Lookup

Enable DHCP Server Using dnsmasq

19. You can enable the DHCP server by uncommenting the dhcp-range option and
supply the range of addresses available for lease and optionally a lease time e.g
(repeat for more than one network).

dhcp-range=192.168.0.50,192.168.0.150,12h

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20. The following option defines where the DHCP server will keep its lease database,
this will helps you to easily check IP addresses it has assigned.

dhcp-leasefile=/var/lib/dnsmasq/dnsmasq.leases

21. To make the DHCP server to authoritative mode, uncomment the option.

dhcp-authoritative

22. Save the file and restart the dnsmasq service to apply the recent changes.

# systemctl restart dnsmasq

That brings us to the end of this guide. To reach us for any questions or thoughts you
want to share about this guide, use the feedback form below.

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10 thoughts on “How to Setup a DNS/DHCP

Server Using dnsmasq on CentOS/RHEL 8/7”

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Sweptnumbernumbernumber
February 13, 2023 at 4:00 pm

I think you did wrong with the resolv.conf permission part. It’s been
overwritten from time to time due to another daemon controlling it.

It’s a link in the place. So instead of making it readonly, you shall do this:

# ls -lh /etc/resolv.conf

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root /etc/resolv.conf ->

../run/resolvconf/resolv.conf

Stop the systemd dns daemon running on port 53

$ sudo systemctl disable systemd-resolved

$ sudo systemctl stop systemd-resolved

Replace it with dnsmasq running on port 53.

$ sudo apt update

$ sudo apt purge dns-root-data -y
$ sudo apt install dnsmasq --no-install-recommends -y

Take back control of /etc/resolv.conf from //.

$ sudo unlink /etc/resolv.conf

Unlink to get back control of the resolv.conf from ”, then overwrite.

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$ echo 'nameserver 127.0.0.1' | sudo tee /etc/resolv.conf

$ echo 'search localdomain' | sudo tee -a /etc/resolv.conf

How is the flow work:

System → resolv.conf (been controlled by other daemons **if not unlink**).

dnsmasq → hard-coded results /odoo.com/127.0.0.1 with wildcard
match,**break;**
/etc/hosts with an exact match, **break;**
upstream DNS server, **break or timeout then continue
Other ns in resolv.conf if dnsmasq timeout, which would be several seconds.

Might need to edit`/etc/network/interfaces for persistent configuration, or the

file `/etc/netplan/` on Ubuntu servers.

Reply

sachin
June 7, 2021 at 2:34 am

Very helpful article, thank you sir!

Reply

Gineesh
April 24, 2021 at 11:03 am

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Why PTR Record is not working?

any idea?

Also, how to add a default search domain on dnsmasq?

Reply

Guhan Ranganathan
December 14, 2020 at 3:06 pm

How to force a domain name to an IPv6 address in dnsmasq6.conf

Reply

moein
September 7, 2020 at 10:16 pm

Thank you.

I had a question

Suppose I have several directories in the localhost

127.0.0.1/exp1
127.0.0.1/exp2

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127.0.0.1/exp3

What should I do if, for example, I want to redirect each site to that directory
as follows?

address=/example1.com/127.0.0.1 /exp1
address=/example2.com/127.0.0.1 /exp2
address=/example3.com/127.0.0.1 /exp3

Reply

SilentOne
May 15, 2021 at 6:17 pm

DNS resolves hostnames to IP’s or the other way around it has nothing to do
with URI’s i.e address=/example1.com/127.0.0.1 resolves example1.com to
ip address 127.0.0.1 nothing more.

If you want some kind of redirect to configure it inside of your web server
DNS can’t do this

Reply

Elijah
March 9, 2020 at 8:15 pm

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I want to block access to certain domains on the Internet for individual devices
on my network by using the DNS notation. How do I do that with dnsmasq?

Reply

-P
June 2, 2020 at 1:20 pm

You just resolve those domains to localhost (127.0.0.1)

address=/baddomain.com/127.0.0.1

Reply

Elijah
December 15, 2020 at 5:18 pm

Yes, but how to point the devices to read that configuration? My idea was to
reroute all connections (both in- and out-) received and sent by my iPhone
to my Mac instead of the router. That way it would read my host’s file
settings.

Also, how to make dnsmasq respect a custom proxy framework I already

use to not screw things up and render connectivity unusable.

Reply

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David Woodthorpe
August 1, 2021 at 6:18 pm

I would think you would have to configure your iPhone’s network settings
to use the local DNS server.

Reply

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