Ubuntu

Why dnsmasq is active by default?

Asked by johnmne

The software 'dnsmasq' is active by default in Ubuntu 14+.
Why?

This means that an additional software is listening to external communication. (port 53)

Generally it is better to have less programs to listen on external interfaces / ethernet.

Could we achieve the same functionality without listening on port 53 ?

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actionparsnip
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Best actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#1

It is a caching DNS caching service and is why your resolv.conf points to localhost. The server only accepts connections from your PC and no others. Many applications you use use the loopback interface to communicate between processes. This allows the system to be incredibly flexible over network links.

Without dnsmasq the system will need to use the web every time it needs to resolve a name using DNS. This is incredibly slow. Caching the resolution makes the web faster and is default in Windows too

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johnmne (phi-reporter) said : 		#2

Thanks actionparsnip, that solved my question.