How do I resolve DNS using Tor?

Question

I don't want my traffic to be proxied though Tor, but I want to anonymize DNS requests. How do I use Tor as a DNS server?

Answer 1

Use DNSPort 53 setting in torrc and configure nameserver to 127.0.0.1

Answer 2

Just to add some more information to this (and to provide a source for others), an in-depth set of instructions and alternative solutions can be found in the below wiki entry.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Tor#Using_TorDNS_for_all_DNS_queries

Answer 3

Actually the answer of @RichardHorrocks is quite helpful, but IMHO leaves out some of the relevant parts:

• If you want to resolve a single hostname via Tor, use tor-resolve $hostname and for reverse (PTR) lookups use tor-resolve -x $ip. (For me, that part was relevant but nowhere else in this Q&A mentioned, hence the new reply.)

  Only drawback so far: You can't specify the query type (e.g. A, NS, MX, etc.) and also IPv6-only hosts (those with only AAAA records) can't (yet) be resolved at all and cause such a message: [warn] Got SOCKS5 status response '4': host is unreachable

• For using Tor to generally resolve all DNS requests of the local system, the anonymous answer already shows the basics and the link in the answer of @RichardHorrocks the details.