smartdns VS dnsmasq

For DNS just run smartdns (https://github.com/pymumu/smartdns/blob/master/ReadMe_en.md) in your NAS, RPi or DD-WRT/OpenWRT router and enjoy.

SmartDNS is probably appropriate for your needs. https://github.com/pymumu/smartdns/blob/master/ReadMe_en.md

That's when you connect to your VPN.

I have a network configuration with 2 dnsmasqs, 1 with pi-hole-style hosts block, and 1 without, and most of my devices get the ad-blocking DNS, 1 gets the "unfiltered" DNS, on dnsmasq you can tag MAC addresses and create different configurations (including which DNS they get) for each tag, e.g. https://github.com/imp/dnsmasq/blob/770bce967cfc9967273d0acf...

This seems like an improvement over my current solution in that it can keep multiple projects open simultaneously and route to each of them, but does add more complexity to the setup.

I'm using Dnsmasq (https://thekelleys.org.uk/dnsmasq/doc.html) to map anything at .lo to the currently running project, like so:

  brew install dnsmasq

I would use a simple dns proxy like Blocky if you want adblocking or dnsmasq if you don't.

The wild thing about this strip is that its real https://thekelleys.org.uk/dnsmasq/doc.html.

The pervious setup was much the same except the lab was under the UDMP without another gateway. I used UnifiOS to create networks(vLANs) and trusted that segregation to work. It did not. As I progressed in my home lab, I went through a few hypervisors and settled on EXSi and vSphere. 100% overkill but that is what labbing is for right? again progressing through and adding things like windows AD and many Home Automation things like Home Assistant, Node Red and MQTT. through all of this I struggled with DHCP/DNS, mostly conflicts with misconfigured vLANs etc. This led me to research the DHCP/DNS running on the UDMP, it is Dnsmasq which is very capable of doing the things I learned I needed like conditional forwarding and statics routes(yes the GUI has this, will get to that). After reading posts like this about the possibility of modifying dnsmasq through scripts, I was concerned about the viability of this long term as my 2nd use case(family) would be effected by any complications. This led me to the above design, which I then implemented.

If you can handle all these, then the easiest way to setup a local dev DNS is dnsmasq. You can install it via HomeBrew.

If you are still interested, I heartily suggest using dnsmasq to do the dhcp/tftp/PXE service. I’ve used it on airgapped networks to boot systems and install a base Linux OS or run diagnostic tools.

It turns out that this was a rather short-term problem for me, so I do not have any reason to try my hand at a solution at this time. However, dnsmasq provides a DBus interface, so it seems like it would be trivial to script up a resolved replacement and register/unregister nameservers in runit run/finish files. Unbound's control interface may be a viable option as well.