How to Install dnsmasq Caching DNS Server in Ubuntu

As you may have noticed over the past few days, my domain registrar (HostFast) suspended the domain cnx-software.com for what I believe to be questionable reasons, meaning the site was inaccessible to the outside world and to myself. I can’t do much about the latter and I’m hostage to the will of the domain registrar, but I was able to access my own website with my domain name after installing a DNS server via dnsmasq on my Ubuntu 20.04 laptop.

Edit: Most of the steps below are actually not necessary in Ubuntu 20.04, as you can simply edit /etc/hosts (step 4). I’ll just leave the instructions below in case anyone needs to install dnsmasq.

Here are the steps I followed.

1. Install dnsmasq
   

   
   

2. It didn’t work at first because systemd-resolved is already installed, so I disabled it by following instructions on askubuntu:
   

   sudo systemctl stop systemd-resolved sudo systemctl disable systemd-resolved sudo systemctl mask systemd-resolved

   sudo systemctl Stop systemd–resolved sudo systemctl disable systemd–resolved sudo systemctl hide systemd–resolved

   
   

3. I then added nameservers to /etc/dnsmasq.conf:
   

   server=8.8.8.8 server=4.4.4.4

   server=8.8.8.8 server=4.4.4.4

   
   

4. and the cnx-software.com IP address to /etc/hosts:
   

   96.126.96.41 www.cnx-software.com

   96.126.96.41 www.cnx–Software.com

   
   

5. The last step was to restart dnsmasq:
   

   restart sudo dnsmasq service

   sudo service dnsmasq reboot

   
   

And… magic! I was able to access my own website again through my local DNS server.

With some websites, you can just type the IP address into the web browser, but since CNX Software relies on WordPress, the domain name search must work for the website to display correctly. At least now I can write articles (and talk to myself!), which is a huge improvement since I couldn’t access my own website before.

The DNS is a centralized system, which means anyone is at the mercy of higher powers, bad actors, etc. I think it’s not ideal, but there is no suitable alternative to DNS at the moment, and become your own domain registrar is difficult and/or expensive…

Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 on a part-time basis, before stepping down as director of software engineering and starting writing daily news and reviews full-time later in 2011.