Question on manually setting my DNS server address

In networking what I'm accustomed to is you pull up the addresses for your machine, you can set if the IP address is automatic or manual AND you can set if DNS is automatic or manual.

In my typical setup I have the IP address automatic and I manually set the DNS to 1.1.1.1 subnet 1.0.0.1.
Now also in that user interface, the DNS address is two edited displays so that I enter each of the 4 octets and it manages things under the cover.
But now I'm in Linux Mint and when it wants an address it is just a freaking text box!! It says separate additional numbers with a comma, but there is no help about how subnets are handled.

1) So thanks to lazy programming How do I enter an address and subnet in the DNS server box?
2) The lable for the field says "Additional DNS servers" - does this mean it adds my manual number to the automatic server numbers? The whole purpose of providing a manually defined DNS number is to avoid using the DNS machines used by your ISP.

Thanks in advance for your help.
I sure hope I am not too late but DNS does not have a subnet. subnet is for your network not the DNS. please see https://thisvsthat.io/dns-vs-subnet-mask
So that is why you can't enter a subnet for DNS. I have never seen a subnet for any DNS in windoze or linux or even apple.

I am pretty sure you just meant secondary DNS which is NOT A SUBNET.

When you go to a mechanic with a bad brake caliper and you tell him that you are having problems with the engine, Your mechanic will not find your problem. Use the right terminology and ask the right questions to get the right answers.

To answer your question you will NEVER get the subnet for DNS entered because it does not exist.

No offense meant but I am a network tech and I read your question and even had to verify I was right about subnet.

I think you are wanting secondary DNS but maybe you are actually looking for subnet and looking to apply it to the wrong place? either way I'd like to help you not make things worse.
 


So you said that the code had room for "other formats" but in the case of IP addresses there will only be IPV4 and IPV6. The first is nearly used up. The second has 2^128 combinations of numbers. We will be dead and our kids will be dead by the time there is another format.

Your code is possible but there is no validation of the data entered and you are missing determination if the subnet has been provided or not. You treat both types equally but the IPV4 is a 32 bit value with a second 32 bit value for the subnet while the IPV6 is128 bit number. Also if it is an IPV6 they have a rule where :: indicates multiple entries of 0000. And THAT's the rub with just a textbox. Both the address and subnet look the same but have different purposes. Also your IPV6 code doesn't validate that the correct subnet was entered for the IPV6 number. (the first sextuplet is the subnet)

So you may have missed it in this thread but I have been a professional computer scientist for over 30 years. I've designed systems, designed a banks branch software, and spent 5 years writing code for the Department of Defense. I also worked on a new operating system and wrote a compiler. So I have just a little bit of background in coding and design. :)
Before this turns into a coding debate and digresses horribly off-topic (feel free to start a new thread in the General section), it's clear you don't know Python. Totally understandable since, if what you say is true about your past, you likely worked in older languages.
I'm quite new to Python myself, so I totally get where you'd be coming from. Python-isms sometimes very frustrating and verbose because something that could be done simply in C requires nesting in Python so the volume of code sometimes makes you forget the odd check here and there (which is why the spec makes clear things should be modular as possible). I still consider myself a novice in Python -- it can be a very odd language for us coming from the older gen.
There are mistakes in my code, I actually pointed that out in the comments -- like using a try-except short hack -- but none of the issues you mentioned are issues. The most glaring error I noticed was there's no constraint on the maximum size of a hectet -- though that's a one-line fix if you want to hair-split. But barring the aforementioned error, the code actually works (add that extra if-statement to ensure a maximum hectet and try it yourself ;) ). Anyway, that's all moot. The code was supposed to be illustrative, ie. proof-of-concept, which is why I didn't go over it for errors, so I think you may have missed the point of what I was trying to get at in my last post.
That all said, I do appreciate your enthusiasm for coding and your willingness to learn when it comes to Linux. Thanks for your input.
 
Last edited:
Totally understandable since, if what you say is true about your past, you likely worked in older languages.
I find this discussion funny, I'm not pro, I did coding for fun and learned a lot trough years and can tell that there is no such programmer who worked only in assembly for decades but does not know C or C++ or some other language higher than assembly where assembly can be directly used, ex. for performance reasons or for drivers etc.

Also assembly alone is useless, you still have to link to C API's or similar libraries to write anything useful, in assembly alone you can't even output a piece of text to console without implementing your own printf or similar function which takes a lot of useless effort.

It's even more odd to say to write games but not knowing higher level language other than assembly since most games today are written either in C++ or C# and rarely in any other language, maybe C or Java, and certainly not in assembly, such games are so rare today they're totally nonexistent, I personally know of only one such game and not even sure if it's true.
 
I find this discussion funny, I'm not pro, I did coding for fun and learned a lot trough years and can tell that there is no such programmer who worked only in assembly for decades but does not know C or C++ or some other language higher than assembly where assembly can be directly used, ex. for performance reasons or for drivers etc.

Also assembly alone is useless, you still have to link to C API's or similar libraries to write anything useful, in assembly alone you can't even output a piece of text to console without implementing your own printf or similar function which takes a lot of useless effort.

It's even more odd to say to write games but not knowing higher level language other than assembly since most games today are written either in C++ or C# and rarely in any other language, maybe C or Java, and certainly not in assembly, such games are so rare today they're totally nonexistent, I personally know of only one such game and not even sure if it's true.
I once wrote a TSR in Assembly and made a .com file. It used MS-DOS interrupts to print strings. They had to end with $ instead of a null byte. I made the mistake of failing to check the critical error handling flag, but did check the InDOS flag. Some functions are not re-entrant. I wrote a small program that would read the CMOS clock and reset the DOS clock every now and then, but I happened to be accessing my C compiler disk at the moment and the computer froze. The floppy disk was not write protected, until after this ordeal. I had to write a program to copy a new disk, with only one floppy drive available on the computer, because the built-in program could only copy a 1.4 MB floppy disk with 80 tracks and mine was custom formatted to use 82 tracks. I couldn't get 83 tracks because the drive head kept bumping into the stop inside the drive. I used Assembly to get that custom format. I needed that extra space. I wrote that copying program in Assembly as well, and that without dynamic memory allocation. The computer was an 80286 with 1 MB of physical RAM and no hard drive. I used a RAM drive with 448 kB and kept COMMAND.COM on that so I could remove the floppy disk from the drive without it crashing.

I would have to agree though, programmers need more than just Assembly, unless they are using punch cards on a really really old computer. I have used BASIC, Quick Basic, 80C52 Basic, and even Vic-20 Basic, C, LPC, Pascal, Vax Fortran, Vax and Intel x86 Assembly, along with scripting languages and such like a Makefile, bash, tcsh, HTML/CSS, and still learning JavaScript. I use Python as my calculator. I can start it with a single command and use it as I go without having to compile anything. I would still like to learn x86_64 Assembly on Linux. gcc can do this, but I'm having trouble using global variables when baking that pie. Local variables seem to work ok though. I need to be able to use dynamic or static linking, not just dynamic linking.

Signed,

Matthew Campbell
 
Or.....putting it another way.....Linux lets the users quickly and efficiently hang themselves with the stuff the code lets into the system without ensuring it is correct. Which is why I refused to try and read the mind of the idiot that coded the IP screen with just a textbox. Using just a textbox without directions on how to enter an IP address and a subnet does not let ANYONE tighten the loos nuts'n'bolts but it does let the user completely remove all bolts all nuts and watch everything fall to the ground.

And I found the other day that Linux is very fragile compared to Windows. In Windows if a drive is there for session A and not there for session B then you just get your system without it. If you try to access it you get a message in the UI and have to figure out why the drive isn't there. With Linux if you mounted a drive and it isn't there in Session B Linux cries like a little baby and instead of giving you the UI you get a terminal window and the user has to guess what the hell caused me to get here?
Well, yah. Windows has about a million redundant safeguards and ten billion lines of ancient MS-DOS code (mainly to placate the elderly neckbeards that think a PDP-8 running FORTRAN or COBOL was the height of technical prowess). It also automatically assumes that anybody who boots it up is a retarded, semi-illiterate total f**king MORON that needs mollycoddling and having their hand held every inch of the way.

If that's your idea of computing, I suggest you b****r off back to it. You sound as though you'll be far happier.

Nobody will ever convince me that Gates was some kind of mythical visionary. Certainly not compared to folks like Jobs & Wozniak.....and I never had much time for them, either.

(I also have no time for dweebs who endlessly pick holes in and post reams of crap about the most insignificant stuff imaginable. Grumble, grumble, grumble.....)

[*Rant over...!*] Sorry, guys....I'm having "one of those days", y'know? Just ignore me; everybody else does! :oops:


Mike. :p
 
It also automatically assumes that anybody who boots it up is a retarded, semi-illiterate total f**king MORON that needs mollycoddling and having their hand held every inch of the way.

To be fair, that's a pretty safe assumption.

People say that 50% of people have below average intelligence.

This amuses me, because the people who say that are wrong.

See, using the only real metric we have (which is the standard IQ test) about 2.7% of the people can be expected to score exactly 100 on the test. 100 is 'average'.

So, if we subtract that from 100% you'll see that ~48.65% are below average and the same percentage is expected to achieve a score that's above average.

Numeracy... We don't teach math/logic very well.

Now back to your regularly scheduled thread - which appears to be 'finished', if not really 'solved'.
 
People say that 50% of people have below average intelligence.

This amuses me, because the people who say that are wrong.

See, using the only real metric we have (which is the standard IQ test) about 2.7% of the people can be expected to score exactly 100 on the test. 100 is 'average'.

So, if we subtract that from 100% you'll see that ~48.65% are below average and the same percentage is expected to achieve a score that's above average.

Numeracy... We don't teach math/logic very well.

Now back to your regularly scheduled thread - which appears to be 'finished', if not really 'solved'.
Isn't it that 50% are below the 50th percentile, and 50% above?
 
Isn't it that 50% are below the 50th percentile, and 50% above?

Only if you ignore those people who specifically score the average score. That's some people. Some people will always be 'average'. As such, they're not above average and they're not below average. Plus, their total (mathematically predicted to be about 2.7%) means that neither above average nor below average total 50% of the sum total.

It's a bit pedantic but relatively amusing.

In the case of the IQ test, the test is frequently adjusted to ensure that a score of 100 is average. Though, I much prefer weighted test results. I think they're more useful statistics. But, that'd be a whole lot of digression and don't change anything regarding the number of people who will score a 100 (average) score.
 


Latest posts

Top