resolvconf

In some Linux distributions and related computer operating systems, the resolvconf program maintains the system information about the currently available nameservers and manages the contents of the configuration file resolv.conf, which determines Domain Name System (DNS) resolver parameters.

Before a computer can connect to an external network resource by name (e.g., www.google.com), it must have a means of converting the alpha-numeric names (e.g., wikipedia.org) into numeric network addresses (e.g., 66.230.200.10). The Internet uses these numeric IP addresses as network addresses.

The configuration file resolv.conf normally contains information about the nameservers to be used by the system. However, when multiple programs need to dynamically modify the resolv.conf file they can interfere with each other and the file status can be invalid. The resolvconf program addresses this problem. It acts as an intermediary between programs that supply nameserver information (e.g., DHCP clients) and programs that use nameserver information (e.g., resolver).

When resolvconf is properly installed, the resolv.conf file is replaced by a symbolic link to /etc/resolvconf/run/resolv.conf and the resolver instead uses the dynamically generated linked file.

Implementations

A few distributions are moving to install resolveconf by default, including:

• Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

External links

• resolvconf. Original implementation.
• openresolv. Compatible implementation.
• man page. resolvconf.
• docs.sun.com. Solaris 2.7 "resolv.conf" man page.