Basic DNS setup for MacOS X

[Jim Reid]

>>>>> "George" == George  <george.e.sullivan at saic.com> writes:

    George> Hi all,

    George> I am a Unix System Admin and know very little about a Mac.
    George> My boss just got a Apple laptop with MacOS X on it.  What
    George> are the basic things to do to setup DNS on it so that the
    George> Apple will resolve hostnames from our DNS server.

Just setup a /etc/resolv.conf file, same as you'd do on any other UNIX
host that wants to use the DNS. In fact if your boss uses DHCP on the
laptop to get an IP address, the DHCP client will probably set up the
resolve.conf file for him/her.

    George> We currently are running an Irix DNS server.  Our resolv.conf
    George> on the Irix and Sun clients is very simple:

    George> search twill.see.com 
    George> nameserver zippy.twill.see.com

This is definitely broken. How can the resolver figure out where to
send its DNS queries? Well with a hostname instead of an IP address
after the nameserver directive a resolver would presumably need to
lookup that name in the DNS. But how could it figure out where to send
the DNS query to lookup that name?