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I got a preconfigured debian image that gets it's network configuration by DHCP, however the DNS server is/was fixed to This was configured using /etc/resolv.conf, so I deleted all the entries there. /etc/dhcpc/resolv.conf contains the DNS server I would like to use, however this DNS server isn't used by the system. How do I activate the usage of the DNS server provided by DHCP? Thanks!

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2 Answers 2

ln -sf /etc/dhcpc/resolv.conf /etc/resolv.conf


The system will look only in /etc/resolv.conf for nameservers. What the above command does is it creates a symbolic link /etc/resolv.conf to the file /etc/dhcpc/resolv.conf. In effect, when opening /etc/resolv.conf you actually open the file /etc/dhcpc/resolv.conf. And I take it that file contains the information you want your system to use.

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thanks for your reply, nice idea that would do the job. What I am wodnering about: is this the default way how it's done in common linux distributions? –  stefan.at.wpf Jun 15 '12 at 14:15
@stefan.at.wpf for debian install the resolvconf package –  Ulrich Dangel Jun 16 '12 at 1:57
Nowadays in most common linux distributions network related stuff is managed by the "network-manager". The network manager modifies the file /etc/resolv.conf and fills it with whatever it thinks should be in there. In the past tools like dhclient and alike used to write to /etc/resolv.conf directly. –  Bananguin Jun 16 '12 at 4:57
up vote 1 down vote accepted

I ended up installing isc-dhcp-client, seems to fix the problem. Thanks for all the other hints, though!

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