KerbyServer

For those of you who don't know, the router and gateway for my home's internal network is a computer running Fedora 7. It also acts as the DNS server for the computers on the network to provide hostname resolution for each of the machines, which keeps me from having to type IP addresses all day long. Up to now, though, I did not have this router computer configured to query its own DNS server, so I still had to use IP addresses when using it. Here is what I did to have the router query its own DNS server.

First, edit the resolv.conf file:
sudo vim /etc/resolv.conf

In my case, my file looks like:
search kerbyserver.net
nameserver 127.0.0.1

This will cause my router to query its own Bind DNS server and search incomplete hostnames on the kerbyserver.net base.

I had tried this in the past, but that configuration never lasted long. To make it stick, you need to also edit the configuration of the Internet-connected interface (in my case, eth0):
sudo vim /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0

Be sure the following two options are set as so:
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
PEERDNS=no

This will make sure dhcp is still used to get an IP address from my ISP. Disabling the PEERDNS option will disregard the nameservers suggested by my ISP. This will make sure the /etc/resolv.conf file remains unchanged.