dnsmasq

dnsmasq is a lightweight, easy to configure DNS forwarder, designed to provide DNS. It can serve the names of local machines which are not in the global DNS.

This setup is Optional. According to RFC 2606 (1999) the TLD .localhost is reserved for use for testing locally. MacOS by default support .localhost domain name i.e., http://traefik.localhost If you want to use any other custom TLD, follow next steps.

Install

For this guide, we will be using .test as the TLD. Let’s start by installing it:

brew install dnsmasq

We edit the configuration file with:

# edit and add `address=/test/127.0.0.1`
subl /usr/local/etc/dnsmasq.conf
$ Or
echo 'address=/.test/127.0.0.1' > /opt/homebrew/etc/dnsmasq.conf

Now we only have to start it and add it to the resolvers:

sudo brew services start dnsmasq

output

==> Tapping homebrew/services
Cloning into '/usr/local/Homebrew/Library/Taps/homebrew/homebrew-services'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 14, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (14/14), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (9/9), done.
remote: Total 14 (delta 0), reused 7 (delta 0), pack-reused 0
Unpacking objects: 100% (14/14), done.
Tapped 1 command (44 files, 59.7KB).
Warning: Taking root:admin ownership of some dnsmasq paths:
  /usr/local/Cellar/dnsmasq/2.80/sbin
  /usr/local/Cellar/dnsmasq/2.80/sbin/dnsmasq
  /usr/local/opt/dnsmasq
  /usr/local/opt/dnsmasq/sbin
  /usr/local/var/homebrew/linked/dnsmasq
This will require manual removal of these paths using `sudo rm` on
brew upgrade/reinstall/uninstall.
==> Successfully started `dnsmasq` (label: homebrew.mxcl.dnsmasq)

Test

You can try if it is correctly setup by pinging any .test domain like test.test

ping test.test

dig testing.testing.one.two.three.test @127.0.0.1

If the ping works congrats, you have finished configuring your environment!

Configuring MacOS

sudo mkdir -p /etc/resolver
sudo tee /etc/resolver/test >/dev/null <<EOF
nameserver 127.0.0.1
EOF

Reference

• https://passingcuriosity.com/2013/dnsmasq-dev-osx/