Shane Handley wrote: > Thanks for the explanation Stuart. > > Predictably their opt-out instructions do not include Linux: > > http://websearch.bigpond.com/bpdnshelp.do > > I changed my DNS settings, but to no avail. > > Can anyone rid me of these bastards? I get stabby whenever I see that > logo. Or is this something I will be forced to deal with as a BigPond > user?
1) Install BIND on your system (sudo apt-get install bind9). 2) Set your machine's DNS resolve to be 127.0.0.1 (localhost). The easiest way is to edit your /etc/resolv.conf to have localhost as the only name server (sudo echo "nameserver 127.0.0.1" > /etc/resolv.conf). 3) Close all Firefox windows (this is important, as Firefox will only read DNS changes on startup). If you have multiple users on your system (via fast user switching, etc) close their sessions too. Reopen Firefox, and be free of Telstra's DNS. BIND9 by default does not have any forwarders supplied, so it will do name resolution directly from the root nameservers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_nameserver You may find your DNS resolution slower than normal for the first few minutes of web browsing, as you have to go out of the Telstra network to resolve names. But BIND9 caches data, so after a few minutes you'll actually find it will be faster (particularly if you're browsing around inside a few sites). I use BIND9 with root nameserver resolution on all home and business systems I configure (I usually put it on a central firewall or proxy machine so the whole LAN/WAN can use it, and all share the DNS cache). I have had bad experiences with ISP-supplied DNS servers too many times in the past, and find it infinitely more reliable to handle DNS "straight from the horses mouth", as it were. As another option, I have heard good things about OpenDNS: http://www.opendns.com/ But I've never used it myself, so I can't comment. -Dan -- ubuntu-au mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-au
