Several DNS-related programs want to automatically manage the DNS name server and resolution configuration file at /etc/resolv.conf. In some situations, you may want to manage this file yourself. Here is how you identify which programs are automatically managing this file on your Linux distribution, and how you can take back manual control of the file.

There are quite a few different tools that fight to control a Linux system’s DNS resolution configuration file /etc/resolv.conf including netconfig, NetworkManager, resolvconf, rdnssd, and systemd-resolved.