Mac OS X 10.10.1 AMP stack offline use - macos

Question

before the update to Yosemite (on Mavericks) i was able to access my locally hosted sites via apache even when the wifi was completely turned off. i set up my AMP stack according to this tutorial: http://wizardmode.com/2012/06/apache-php-mysql-dev-on-os-x-lion-with-a-minimum-of-pain/
FROM THE TUTORIAL
One more thing. OS X will refuse to do DNS lookups if you’re not connected to a network (under some circumstances). There’s a simple way around that, in two steps:
First, install VirtualBox. Create a new virtual machine, and give it a Host-only network adapter. (You can use the FreeDos image, if you don’t actually need a virtual machine for anything. It’s small.) Start the virtual machine at least once.
You can do this from the commandline with this snippet (after VirtualBox is installed):
(ifconfig | grep -s vboxnet) || VBoxManage hostonlyif create ipconfig vboxnet0 --ip 192.168.56.1 --netmask 255.255.255.0
This prevents OS X from disabling normal DNS resolution when you’re not connected to a network.
Second, create a ‘dev’ domain resolver entry:
sudo mkdir -p /etc/resolver
sudo tee /etc/resolver/dev <<EOT
nameserver 127.0.0.1
domain dev
search_order 1
EOT
This tells OS X that it can always ask localhost (your dnsmasq server) for domain resolution for .dev domains when it doesn’t have other DNS servers.
Now if you type ifconfig in a terminal, one of the lines should start with vboxnet0: – if it does, great! OS X will happily do DNS lookups even if you’re on an airplane, so you can keep using your .dev domains wherever you are.
END TUTORIAL SECTION
after the update i went through hell to get all my local sites running and now they only work if i have an internet connection
I am running dnsmasq according to the tutorial and I did the whole VirtualBox trick. here is the relevant output of ifconfig:
vboxnet0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
ether 0a:00:27:00:00:00
inet 192.168.56.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.56.255
vboxnet1: flags=8842<BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
ether 0a:00:27:00:00:01
I'm not really sure what's going wrong. Here is a screenshot of my wifi network settings:
you can see the opendns servers and then localhost for dns resolution purposes.
furthermore, here is scutil --dns output:
DNS configuration
resolver #1
nameserver[0] : 208.67.222.222
nameserver[1] : 208.67.220.220
nameserver[2] : 127.0.0.1
flags : Request A records, Request AAAA records
reach : Reachable
resolver #2
domain : dev
nameserver[0] : 127.0.0.1
flags : Request A records, Request AAAA records
reach : Reachable,Local Address
order : 1
DNS configuration (for scoped queries)
resolver #1
nameserver[0] : 208.67.222.222
nameserver[1] : 208.67.220.220
nameserver[2] : 127.0.0.1
if_index : 4 (en0)
flags : Scoped, Request A records, Request AAAA records
reach : Reachable
I'm really at a loss here for what's happening and going wrong. I've tried debugging some of the shell scripts from the tutorial to see if they are causing problems but I can't figure it out. This should be simple as pie IMO. Why is this such a nightmare?
Any help would be greatly, greatly appreciated as I'm wasting valuable time that could be used for building useful things on this mess. THANK YOU!!!!

Answer 1

As of 10.10 and discoveryd no DNS resolution can take place when you are disconnected from all networks.
you can confirm this by running scutil --dns once when connected, and again when disconnected.
Here is a video that shows the difference in behavior between 10.9 and 10.10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m9OI_AjCx8
I've tried to escalate this with Apple, the response was that it's expected behavior.
The only workaround I know of is to re-add mDNSResponder as per http://arstechnica.com/apple/2015/01/why-dns-in-os-x-10-10-is-broken-and-what-you-can-do-to-fix-it/