How to allow local network dotless names using Network Manager in Linux Mint with DHCP?

Question

I have two hosts, MintPC and AlpineVM. The VM is on a bridged network so it appears as its own device on the network with its own address. Both obtain addresses through DHCP provided by my router/gateway. I can't do very much to customize or change it through the web UI.

On AlpineVM, nslookup MintPC returns the correct IP address of 10.1.10.97 and ping MintPC works just fine. However, on MintPC, nslookup AlpineVM returns NXDOMAIN and ping AlpineVM returns name or service not found.

Even though they are using the same DHCP server, AlpineVM configures itself to query the router/gateway as the primary DNS server, while MintPC seems to configure itself to use the ISP's DNS servers first.

Is there any good way to alter this? I would like both MintPC and AlpineVM to be able to use dotless names to resolve each other's IP addresses. Ideally, I wouldn't need to do too much tinkering to achieve this. I'd like to avoid using static mappings or hosts files, if possible.

Answer 1

The two distros probably have very different settings in /etc/dhcp/dhclient.conf.

My guess is that the MintPC VM has domain-name-servers in the request line (and your DHCP server is providing the ISP's name server), while the Alpine VM doesn't.

Or the opposite, and your DHCP daemon on the router is providing its own IP address as the nameserver and is capable of resolving the names for local machines.

Either way, make the one that doesn't work match the dhclient config of the one that does.