"Proponents of the UNIX arts-and-crafts movement just run unbound(8) on localhost. Which works reasonably well until you are behind a captive portal and you have to use the dhcp-provided nameservers until you accept the terms and conditions. So you bring out your editor again..."
you decipher the domain(s) and IP address(es) the portal uses for sign-in, then you put this info into your unbound.conf as "local-data:" or something similar.
And you are free again to ignore the DHCP provided nameservers, keeping your localhost DNS server address in resolv.conf.
"I think we can do better."
You can and I am sure you will.
What I would like to see is a localhost DNS server that runs on a mobile OS.
Perhaps you run your own wireless router between your wireless-enabled computers and the third party access point. You can send 127.x as a nameserver in DHCP but this only works if your computers can run localhost DNS, e.g., tinydns/dnscache/dqcache, nsd/unbound, etc.
Sounds similar to systemd-resolved on Linux:
When a problem is finally solved well on OpenBSD it’s usually the best solution going. Some might not agree but I think OpenBSD has the best wireless configuration system going, and the most Unixy one as well.
hmm, what a name for a dns server. in the beginning i thought the article is about libunwind that resolves stack addresses to function names/symbols.