60.11 DNS Search Options
20180422
When searching for a mapping from a host name to
an IP address we will sometimes be regularly wanting to find host
names within a common domain. For example, you might set up a
collection of computers with hostnames like theano and
nyx. These might belong to the domain name
togaware.com. Thus their fully qualified domain names would
be theano.togaware.com and nyx.togaware.com. You
may find yourself connecting to these computers often using
ssh, for example.
The IP address lookup for hostnames can be configured to attempt to
search for the address after appending the domain name to the
provided hostname. Thus you can provide theano and the DNS
server will be asked for the IP address of
theano.togaware.com. Then you can simply type the hostname
with ssh to connect to the expected computer.
With a Network Manager setup you can add these additional search domains to the configuration. Click the Network Manager icon in the panel to select Edit Connections… and to then double click the network connection (e.g., Wired connection 1) Switch to the IPv4 Settings tab and update the Search domains: field with a comma-separated list of domains. Then click Save. Then disconnect and reconnect to have the changes take effect.
A more traditional approach was done by adding those other domains to
/etc/resolv.conf with the search keyword.
In even older times PPP would add its own ISP related resolv.conf file
on successful dial up to contain the ISP’s domain name automatically
for convenience and sourced that file from
/etc/ppp/resolv/provider
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