Need help setting up DNS resolution between containers

[svenjacobs]

Hello, can someone please help me setting up DNS resolution between two rootless containers? I just can't get it to work. This is a very simple Compose setup:

name: test
services:
  hello:
    image: alpine:3
    command: tail -f /dev/null
    networks:
      - example

  world:
    image: alpine:3
    command: tail -f /dev/null
    networks:
      - example

networks:
  example:

Now I enter container hello and try to lookup world:

> podman exec -it test_hello_1 /bin/sh

/ # cat /etc/resolv.conf
search dns.podman
nameserver 10.89.9.1

/ # nslookup world
Server:         10.89.9.1
Address:        10.89.9.1:53

** server can't find world.dns.podman: NXDOMAIN

** server can't find world.dns.podman: NXDOMAIN

/ # nslookup google.com
Server:         10.89.9.1
Address:        10.89.9.1:53

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:   google.com
Address: 142.250.185.174

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:   google.com
Address: 2a00:1450:4001:811::200e

Also trying these two simple commands give me the same server can't find... errors.

This is the output of network inspect

> podman network inspect test_example
[
     {
          "name": "test_example",
          "id": "88c56794da600a5e950adc870b2f952a5a0956e6cd7e10cfe2483a6188e0f3d4",
          "driver": "bridge",
          "network_interface": "podman10",
          "created": "2025-10-18T18:58:46.063615075+02:00",
          "subnets": [
               {
                    "subnet": "10.89.9.0/24",
                    "gateway": "10.89.9.1"
               }
          ],
          "ipv6_enabled": false,
          "internal": false,
          "dns_enabled": true,
          "labels": {
               "com.docker.compose.project": "test",
               "io.podman.compose.project": "test"
          },
          "ipam_options": {
               "driver": "host-local"
          },
          "containers": {
               "2db04c5093ffa8f8144c62652f88bb12db0165c1abd7f61951d1f906601ed7e1": {
                    "name": "test_world_1",
                    "interfaces": {
                         "eth0": {
                              "subnets": [
                                   {
                                        "ipnet": "10.89.9.3/24",
                                        "gateway": "10.89.9.1"
                                   }
                              ],
                              "mac_address": "56:bf:4e:64:eb:f6"
                         }
                    }
               },
               "6468a0285863eb7f92173831a70f387497d37cd716b3e4822e172d899db89763": {
                    "name": "test_hello_1",
                    "interfaces": {
                         "eth0": {
                              "subnets": [
                                   {
                                        "ipnet": "10.89.9.2/24",
                                        "gateway": "10.89.9.1"
                                   }
                              ],
                              "mac_address": "ae:93:50:61:20:08"
                         }
                    }
               }
          }
     }
]

Note "dns_enabled": true. Something seems to be wrong with my network configuration but I can't figure out what.
Podman version 5.6.2 on Debian 13.

Thanks for any help!

Update:

I'm running an AdGuard Home container which exposes port 53 on the host for DNS resolution in my home network. Could this be a problem and if so, how can I run a DNS server on the host and have DNS resolution of container names inside containers?

[svenjacobs]

This comment solved it for me. The container that runs the DNS server was binding the port like this on all interfaces

ports:
  - 53:53/tcp
  - 53:53/udp

which was interfering with the internal DNS resolution. Instead of aardvark my own DNS was handling all queries.