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Find the DNS servers on your Mac?

Dave, I'm a bit puzzled. How do i find what DNS servers my emac is using at any given time?


Dave's Answer:

There are a couple of ways to do this, but let me share with you the graphical solution, since, well, it's a Mac, right?

Go to the System Preferences choice on the Apple Menu and you'll be here:

Mac OS X: System Preferences

Lots of choices (and those on the bottom row are third-party extensions that I've installed too, in case you're wondering why yours aren't quite the same), but what you want to select is Network:

Mac OS X: System Preferences: Network

Almost there, but let me highlight that this is a good stopping point if you're just curious about how your Mac is connected to the network when you have wireless, Ethernet, dialup or other possibilities. It also shows, by color, if your connection is fully functional or not: the green dot next to Ethernet shows that it's a functional connection, while the red dot next to Internal Modem shows that's disabled.

But there's one more click you'll need to do before you can figure out your DNS servers: double click on Ethernet (or whatever is your primary Internet connection):

Mac OS X: System Preferences: TCP/IP Configuration

That shows you what the configured DNS servers are. As you can see, there aren't any that I've pre-loaded, so it's time to delve into the command line instead!

Pop open a Terminal window by launching Applications --> Utilities --> Terminal, then simply type in cat /etc/resolv.conf. Here's what you'll see:

$ cat /etc/resolv.conf 
domain hsd1.co.comcast.net.
nameserver 68.87.85.98
nameserver 68.87.69.146

As you can see, I'm hooked up via Comcast right now and Comcast has given me two DNS servers that are automatically stored in the resolv.conf site.

Between the two, you should be able to identify exactly what DNS servers your eMac computer is using!



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Comments

How effective are apple computers as ecommerce tools?

Posted by: marvin at June 16, 2006 9:23 PM

i have 4 name servesrs

Posted by: tom at February 24, 2008 2:06 AM

when i type that into the terminal, it gives me one nameserver, which is the same as my router ip. any help would be super appreciated!

Posted by: Michael at September 26, 2008 12:41 AM

It says "No such file or directory", could you please help me resolve this problem.

Posted by: Jonathan Matias at October 3, 2008 10:34 AM


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