dnsmasq

dnsmasq is a small domain name server designed to resolve host names on a LAN.

You may want to assign an actual domain to a hostname, to provide wildcard name resolution.

An example would be that a host could be named server.local, but *.server.local should also resolve to the same IP address.

Add an extra domain to /etc/dnsmasq.conf, and then restart the server.

address=/.server.local/192.168.12.180

OS X also uses mDNS to do hostname lookups, so you can add an entry for the server as well.

dnsmasq can be setup to do wildcard DNS resolution natively, instead of updating an hosts file.

First, install dnsmasq with homebrew:

brew install dnsmasq

Install the sample config file:

cp /usr/local/opt/dnsmasq/dnsmasq.conf.example /usr/local/etc/dnsmasq.conf

Add this to configuration file to disable DHCP server, and resolve subdomains locally:

no-dhcp-interface=
address=/.steve.beandog.org/127.0.0.1

cp /usr/local/opt/dnsmasq/*.plist /Library/LaunchDaemons
launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/homebrew.mxcl.dnsmasq.plist

Configure OS X to resolv all *.name.beandog.org to use the localhost DNS server:

mkdir -p /etc/resolver
echo nameserver 127.0.0.1 > /etc/resolver/name.beandog.org