/etc/resolver: TLD itself not resolved by custom resolver

Question

I'm using the /etc/resolver technique for a dev domain as explained in some blog posts around the web (like this one).

I used this technique previously on 10.9, but on my new Yosemite there seems to be one small problem: the TLD itself, i.e dev, does not seem to be resolved by the custom DNS. In other words on 10.9 both dev and *.dev would be passed to dnsmasq and resolved correctly, but on Yosemite this only happens for *.dev. dev is resolved by something else to an address other than the one configured in dnsmasq.

I know dnsmasq works properly:

# host dev localhost
Using domain server:
Name: localhost
Address: 127.0.0.1#53
Aliases: 

dev has address 127.0.0.1

however:

# ping -c 1 dev
PING dev (127.0.53.53): 56 data bytes
^C
--- dev ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 0 packets received, 100.0% packet loss
# ping -c 1 a.dev
PING a.dev (127.0.0.1): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.035 ms

--- a.dev ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 1 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 0.035/0.035/0.035/0.000 ms

My /etc/resolver/dev is:

nameserver 127.0.0.1

I know I can just add dev itself to /etc/hosts, since it's the only one that doesn't work it not a big deal. However I'd like to know if I did something wrong and if I can achieve the same behaviour I had previously on 10.9.

Answer 1

127.0.53.53 is a special address, indicating a possible name collision. What's happened is Google has registered .dev as a new TLD, and dnsmasq is trying to inform you that your use of .dev could collide with the new official use of .dev.

Though it's strange you can get *.dev to resolve correctly, I can't, I just made Apache listen on 127.0.53.53 because I'm lazy like that.

Here's ICANN's explanation of 127.0.53.53