Forcing DNS on macOS in Recovery Mode

When resetting a 2020 MacBook Air, we ran into an issue where the device just wouldn’t connect to Apple’s servers. It felt like a DNS issue, but I couldn’t find a way to see or set DNS values. After some searching, I came across this Stack Overflow post with the solution. As that site was sold to a tech investment firm in June, 2021 (promising not to change a thing), I thought it best to preserve it here.

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Here it is:

Usually DNS-server setup in the shell is done with sudo networksetup ... – a tool not available in the Base OS X System of the Recovery Mode.

You should still be able to change the DNS server with scutil in Terminal.app:

1. Open Terminal.app in the menubar > Utilities
2. Enter scutil --dns to get your current DNS config
3. Enter scutil to reach interactive mode
4. Enter list to get a list of all keys in the data store
5. If you have several interfaces (you’ve found several State:/Network/Service/SERVICE_ID/IPv4 entries) determine the one connected to the Internet (based on e.g. your router and its internal network IP settings) – example:get State:/Network/Service/EB40E2FC-8248-48F2-8567-257D940A31EB/IPv4 d.show Example output:<dictionary> { Addresses : <array> { 0 : 192.168.0.8 } ConfigMethod : Manual SubnetMasks : <array> { 0 : 255.255.255.0 } } If your router has the IP-address 192.168.0.1 this should be the proper interface. If your router has e.g. the IP address 192.168.1.1 the interface found above would be the wrong one and you have to search for an interface with an IP in the range 192.168.1.2-192.168.1.254.
6. Enter get State:/Network/Service/EB40E2FC-8248-48F2-8567-257D940A31EB/DNS use the service ID of the interface connected to the Internet you have found previously (here EB40E2FC-8248-48F2-8567-257D940A31EB)Entering d.show should show something like:<dictionary> { SearchDomains : <array> { 0 : some.domain } ServerAddresses : <array> { 0 : 192.168.0.1 } } Depending on the DHCP setup of your router the SearchDomains entry and array may be missing.
7. Enter d.add ServerAddresses * 8.8.8.8 9.9.9.9 – add one or more DNS-server (here Google’s 8.8.8.8 and quad9’s 9.9.9.9)
8. Enter set State:/Network/Service/EB40E2FC-8248-48F2-8567-257D940A31EB/DNS
9. Enter d.show to check the modified dict entry. It should show something like:<dictionary> { SearchDomains : <array> { 0 : some.domain } ServerAddresses : <array> { 0 : 8.8.8.8 1 : 9.9.9.9 } }
10. Enter quit to leave the interactive mode of scutil and return to the shell.
11. Enter scutil --dns or dig to verify your new DNS config.