Dnsmasq does not resolve alias on Ubuntu 18 clients

Question

Upgrading a few machines from Ubuntu 16.04 to 18.04 made me realize Ubuntu 18 cannot resolve the aliases I have configured in dnsmasq.

/etc/dnsmasq.conf

[...]
# Include another lot of configuration options.
#conf-file=/etc/dnsmasq.more.conf
#conf-dir=/etc/dnsmasq.d
conf-file=/etc/dnsmasq_alias.conf
[...]

/etc/dnsmasq_alias.conf

# cat dnsmasq_alias.conf 
# Provide an alias for a "local" DNS name. Note that this _only_ works
# for targets which are names from DHCP or /etc/hosts. Give host
# "bert" another name, bertrand
# NOTE: It is important to set FQDN to CNAME: cname=bug.domain.name,bugzilla
cname=ci.company.intranet,git-lab
cname=gitlab.company.intranet,git-lab
cname=invoice.company.intranet,prod-db-inv-01

On Ubuntu 16, If I ping gitlab or gitlab.company.intranet it works, however it does not if do the same in Ubuntu 18.

Since it has been working and works normally on both Windows and Ubuntu 16.04 servers, I am thinking this could be something related to Ubuntu's new version (18.04)?

Dnsmasq runs on Ubuntu 16.04.

Answer 1

I've had the same issue. I don't know the real cause or a better fix, but I found that it's possible to workaround by adding the domain to the alias target in dnsmasq. It's not ideal, but at least it's a central change rather than every DNS client.

So in your case, instead of

cname=ci.company.intranet,git-lab

Try

cname=ci.company.intranet,git-lab.company.intranet