It isn't just vpn's managed by an operator from hell. It would be fairly straight-forward to script the above scutil session but you'd still have to run the script manually after a network connection comes up. If you want to specify particular DNS servers, useĭ.add ServerAddresses * 10.0.1.2 112.21.44.66īy the way, the '*' signifies array values, so it's not some kind of wild card.Ĭheck the Networking Preference panel and you will notice those damn grayed out DNS server entries are gone! They will come back next time you connect and they will be first in the list. Without service-specific DNS servers, Mac OS will fall back to DNS servers from other network services. > set State:/Network/Service/A3551F2D-62CE-1234-B79A-6EE50CA7AE30/DNSĬlears the ServerAddresses array, thereby removing all DNS-servers tied to that particular connection ('service' in Apple-talk). Reset the ServerAddresses entry to an empty array: Obtain a working copy of the DNS configuration entry. > show State:/Network/Service/A3551F2D-62CE-1234-B79A-6EE50CA7AE30/DNSĪhh, this is the one! So let's get rid of those pesky servers. List all network services with DNS configuration: With the VPN connected, launch scutil with root privileges: After hours and hours of hard work (my fingertips still hurt from all the googling) I present to you a solution: For me this need typically arises when I connect to a VPN managed by an operator from hell. Anyways, this would be all swell if there wasn't the occasional need for manually specifying DNS servers. Survival of the fittest, I guess, or, Darwin's intelligent design. They generally go through Darwin's resolver library which instead of reading /etc/nf looks up DNS servers via the SystemConfiguration framework backed by configd. The dig and nslookup utilities still read it but most applications use a different mechanism for picking DNS servers when resolving host names. I'll have to break sad news to you: /etc/nf has been made redundant in Mac OS X.

Show dns servers mac terminal