DNS no longer resolves non-FQDN local hosts - pfSense 2.3.3

Nullity

After upgrading from 2.3.2 no client (or pfSense itself) can resolve DHCP hostnames that exclude the domain: ex. "pfsense.wlan" works but "pfsense" now fails.

The domain is set in General as "wlan".

I saw nothing in the changelog that seems related.

Where do I start trouble-shooting?

johnpoz

There is no troubleshooting.. Yes you need to use fqdn to resolve stuff.. Which is how its should of always been..

Nullity

@johnpoz:

There is no troubleshooting.. Yes you need to use fqdn to resolve stuff.. Which is how its should of always been..

Hmm… It's how I've done it for years. (I think) DHCP shares the domain suffix (Linux resolv.conf "search" config param) of my local network.

All my devices exclude the ".wlan" local domain so this has quite annoyingly fucked my network.

Anyway, it worked for 2+ years with pfSense and a couple of years before that with router's that used dnsmasq. Something has obviously changed with (edit: my) pfSense.

johnpoz

Here
https://redmine.pfsense.org/issues/6064

This was listed in the release notes of 2.3.3
https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/2.3.3_New_Features_and_Changes#DNS_.2F_Resolver_.2F_Forwarder
Changed behavior of DNS Resolver overrides to only add FQDN entries, not short hostnames #6064

"All my devices exclude the ".wlan" local domain so this has quite annoyingly fucked my network."

Should of read the release notes ;) And not using FQDN has been bad idea since forever ;)

Nullity

@johnpoz:

Here
https://redmine.pfsense.org/issues/6064

This was listed in the release notes of 2.3.3
https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/2.3.3_New_Features_and_Changes#DNS_.2F_Resolver_.2F_Forwarder
Changed behavior of DNS Resolver overrides to only add FQDN entries, not short hostnames #6064

"All my devices exclude the ".wlan" local domain so this has quite annoyingly fucked my network."

Should of read the release notes ;) And not using FQDN has been bad idea since forever ;)

I use the forwarder (always have). ;)

Anyway, a restart or two of pfSense & my switch fixed it. My bad… ::)

Though, you seem to be right about using FQDN. Hopefully I'll get around to switching to that...

One strange thing is that 2 of my Android devices with non-DHCP static IPs suddenly stopped resolving local DNS that excluded .wlan. I dunno why they were able to resolve when they had no DHCP-shared domain search suffix. Damned hobby-level network ignorance...

wila

Does my reply here help? –> https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=127274.0

TL;DR uncheck "DNS Server Override" in General settings and set the DNS server manually instead of via DHCP.

johnpoz

There are many devices that will not pull the search suffix from dhcp.. You should set it on the machine - or just use the fqdn when your looking for something vs having to hope it gets added when you just type host..

I mean really how lazy are you? ;)

Nullity

@johnpoz:

There are many devices that will not pull the search suffix from dhcp.. You should set it on the machine - or just use the fqdn when your looking for something vs having to hope it gets added when you just type host..

I mean really how lazy are you? ;)

Personally, I am dangerously lazy which, mixed with my networking ignorance, makes simple networking changes occasionally catastrophic. Learning by necessity is more efficient. Wait… no it isn't.