Handling resolv.conf on Ubuntu Server 14.04 LTS

[Niki Kovacs]

Hi,

I've just installed Ubuntu 14.04 LTS on a public server. Until now I've 
mainly used Slackware for this sort of thing. I'm doing a lot of RTFM to 
see how Ubuntu handles things.

Right now I'm into configuring DNS with BIND, and something puzzles me. 
The traditional *NIX way of configuring the resolver is to just add a 
line or a couple lines in /etc/resolv.conf. Now Ubuntu doesn't handle 
things that way, and after reading the corresponding section in the 
official documentation, here's what my /etc/network/interfaces looks like:

--8<----------------------------------------
# /etc/network/interfaces

# lo
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# eth0
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
   address 195.154.104.191
   netmask 255.255.255.0
   gateway 195.154.104.1
   dns-nameservers 62.210.16.6 62.210.16.7
   dns-search online.net
--8<----------------------------------------

Now let's say I just installed BIND and want to use it, be it as a 
simple caching nameserver or as a primary domain server. In that case, 
on a traditional *NIX system I'd simply open /etc/resolv.conf and add 
the following line :

nameserver 127.0.0.1

And that's it. Immediate effect, without restarting anything.

Now I wanted to do something similar on my Ubuntu server, so I figured 
this information would go in /etc/network/interfaces, like this:

# eth0
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
   address 195.154.104.191
   netmask 255.255.255.0
   gateway 195.154.104.1
   dns-nameservers 127.0.0.1
   dns-search online.net

And now what ? Invoking '/etc/init.d/networking restart' has no effect 
on the content of /etc/resolv.conf, which still keeps the old values.

Do I really have to restart my whole server just to change my DNS 
resolver ? There must surely be another way.

Cheers,

Niki
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