Route complete TLD (*.dev for example) to 127.0.0.1

In Ubuntu 12.10 or later you can do this with dnsmasq as run by NetworkManager.

1. Create the directory mkdir /etc/NetworkManager/dnsmasq.d if it doesn't already exist.

   sudo mkdir /etc/NetworkManager/dnsmasq.d
   

2. Toss the following line into /etc/NetworkManager/dnsmasq.d/dev-tld.

   address=/dev/127.0.0.1
   

3. (Ubuntu 12.10) Restart NetworkManager.

   sudo service network-manager restart
   

4. (Ubuntu > 13.04) Restart Dnsmasq.

   sudo service dnsmasq restart
   

5. Enjoy the awesomeness.

The complete standalone dnsmasq (DHCP and DNS server) is not installed by default in Ubuntu 12.04 and 12.10, but a package called dnsmasq-base is installed by default in Ubuntu Desktop 12.04 and 12.10. The dnsmasq-base package contains the dnsmasq binary and is used by NetworkManager.

To do what you want you will need to use dnsmasq as a caching DNS server. You need to:

• Install dnsmasq sudo apt-get install dnsmasq
• Change your network setting, so that your computer uses itself as it dns server.
• Make the changes to the config files:

Create /etc/dnsmasq.d/dev-tld with these contents:

local=/dev/

address=/dev/127.0.0.5

The first command says *.dev requests can't be forwarded to your real DNS server. The second says *.dev resolves to 127.0.0.5 which is localhost.

• Restart the dnsmasq service (not network-manager)