Installation

I have been using linux based firewall appliances and have some familiarity with their setup and usage -- ipcop, ipfire, smoothwall, etc.

I need IPV6 DNS for a some stuff I'm setting up and M0n0wall caught my eye in regards to ipv6 capability.
I installed from the generic-pc-1.8.8.iso image from CD onto a Dell 2850.

Everything was going well, until we got to setting up DNS entries for hosts on the LAN network. All of the hosts there use statically assigned IP addresses.
The DNS forwarder hosts table appeared to be the most equivalent to the HOSTS table function in the linux firewalls I have used, so we began entering host name, ip addresses and description into the table. 
After saving, we rebooted the m0nowall host just to be _sure_ the changes had taken effect.
This is for ipv4 only - we had not even enabled ipv6 yet.

Some of the entries in the table properly resolved, and others did not.  Some ONLY resolved using the fully qualified host name.

Have I misunderstood what this feature does? 

If I have, is it possible to configure m0n0wall with only a LAN interface and have it do nothing but IPV6 DNS for static IP addresses?

You understood well.
Behind the scene, the DNS forwarder hosts table is used to generate the /etc/hosts file.
Maybe you could post the content of that table so one could look at it and give you a hint about what has gone wrong.

We had to blow it away to get back to business.

This was for IPV4 only - IPV6 had not yet been enabled.
We entered host IP address, short name, domain name an sometimes comments.
One of use used "#" in the comments for some stuff, would that be an issue?

Also, is there anyway to import data?  having to save each entry and then navigate back to the + at the bottom of that section is fine for one or two entries, but for 50 - 75 entries like we have ... it's a chore.


I thought about logging into the console and trying to locate the hosts file, but that doesn't appear to be an option.

Pull the config and edit it in a text editor.  Then upload.

Pull the config and edit it in a text editor.  Then upload.

Where?
Nothing on the screen jumped out at me, and I read through the handbook and didn't see anything about that -- if there is a particular section where I can RTFM, I'd be happy to sop asking dumb questions

Log into your m0n0wall via web browser.

Add a few hosts to the DNS Forwarder table if you haven't already.

Select Backup/restore from the Diagnostics menu.

Download configuration to your PC. Make a second copy of this file and leave it untouched until you are sure you will not need it in case the edits below go badly.

Open the downloaded xml file in a text editor. If you see one long line, use an editor that understands Unix CRLF like Wordpad or a dedicated xml editor.

Look at the hosts entries in the dnsmasq section of the file. Copy one host section, paste it into the file just below, and edit the paste according to your needs.

When done, close the file.

Go back to your m0n0wall and in the Backup/restore from the Diagnostics menu, use Restore configuration to upload your edited config.xml file. M0n0wall will reboot. Verify your hosts in the DNS Forwarder table.

Not exactly convenient, but it can be done.

Good luck.

I think it is VERY convenient!  I moved an entire company with 100 desktops, 30 printers and several servers from 192.168.0.x to 192.168.40.x in 5 minutes!  Search and replace on the config and then bounced the switches!  (Note that moving all the printers from static IP to static DHCP does not count as time against me... )

The power of a simple text config file is amazing.