Arch Linux

2000drz400e

Member

Registered: 2025-11-25

Posts: 3

Trouble with local DNS using systemd-networkd

Look I'm a noob and this should be simple. But for some reason my local DNS just isn't working right. My private LAN at home serves a single DNS server, 10.0.0.4, which is my pi-hole server for blocking ads. It works well. However, my new Arch install is using some kind of mystery DNS server. Internet browsing works and I'm literally making this post from the system having trouble.

However, I can't resolve my local A records that are configured on the pi-hole. And ad blocking is not working like it does on my other systems. Any thoughts on what to check here? The output of resolvectl status even says I am using my local DNS server, 10.0.0.4, but that can't be because the local A records and ad blocking isn't working....

$ resolvectl status
Global
         Protocols: +LLMNR +mDNS -DNSOverTLS DNSSEC=no/unsupported
  resolv.conf mode: foreign
        DNS Domain: ~.

Link 3 (wlan0)
    Current Scopes: DNS LLMNR/IPv4 LLMNR/IPv6 mDNS/IPv4 mDNS/IPv6
         Protocols: +DefaultRoute +LLMNR +mDNS -DNSOverTLS DNSSEC=no/unsupported
Current DNS Server: 10.0.0.4
       DNS Servers: 10.0.0.4
     Default Route: yes

2000drz400e

Member

Registered: 2025-11-25

Posts: 3

Re: Trouble with local DNS using systemd-networkd

update: Gave up and switched to NetworkManager, which involved me running into more issues trying to resolve conflicts between the new NetworkManager install and whatever made the systemd-networkd set up work. Eventually completely broke the networking. After another hour of googling and fiddling I decided to just do a full reinstall and select the NetworkManager option in the archinstall configuration which is much easier to use!

Lone_Wolf

Administrator

From: Netherlands, Europe

Registered: 2005-10-04

Posts: 14,951

Re: Trouble with local DNS using systemd-networkd

Look I'm a noob and this should be simple.

systemd-networkd uses systemd-resolved for everything related to DNS resolution .
The systemd-resolved service is far from simple and very easy to configure incorrect.

---

Disliking systemd intensely, but not satisfied with alternatives so focusing on taming systemd.

clean chroot building not flexible enough ?
Try clean chroot manager by graysky

2000drz400e

Member

Registered: 2025-11-25

Posts: 3

Re: Trouble with local DNS using systemd-networkd

Look I'm a noob and this should be simple.

systemd-networkd uses systemd-resolved for everything related to DNS resolution .
The systemd-resolved service is far from simple and very easy to configure incorrect.

Thanks for the reply! Yes I was doing a lot of fiddling with systemd-resolved trying to get things to work. Surely there is some sort of upside I don't understand to the way it does things but no matter what I did I couldnt seem to get it to just use the DNS server dhcp gave it. You'd think that's how it would just work, like it does for everything else. I'd like to revisit someday and try to understand what the problem was but network manager clearly seems like the way to go for desktop systems so going to stick with that and move on to other things for now.

cryptearth

Member

Registered: 2024-02-03

Posts: 2,092

Re: Trouble with local DNS using systemd-networkd

Look I'm a noob

archinstall

i recommend you to start over again - and follow the official guide https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Installation_guide instead of archinstall or whatever told you to use archinstall in the first place

euromatlox

Member

Registered: 2017-02-10

Posts: 149

Re: Trouble with local DNS using systemd-networkd

I simply have a file /etc/systemd/10-wired.network.
From my desktop, the one on my laptop has little bit different contents.

/24 is for subnet mask 255.255.255.0 (if use different google search: subnet mask short form)

[Match]
Name=enp5s0

[Network]
DHCP=false
DNS=192.168.1.1

[Address]
Address=192.168.1.98/24

[Route]
Gateway=192.168.1.1
Metric=10
Metrics=10
RouteMetric=10

And also /etc/resolv.conf.

# Home router
nameserver 192.168.1.1

Then /etc/hosts. (boksi is the name for pc, shown at prompt)

# Static table lookup for hostnames.
# See hosts(5) for details.
127.0.0.1	localhost.localdomain	localhost
192.168.1.98	boksi
::1		localhost

Last edited by euromatlox (2025-11-25 19:34:40)

cryptearth

Member

Registered: 2024-02-03

Posts: 2,092

Re: Trouble with local DNS using systemd-networkd

/24 is for subnet mask 255.255.255.0 (if use different google search: subnet mask short form)

it's actually called CIDR: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classless … in_Routing