Using DDEV offline¶
DDEV-Local attempts to make offline use work as well as possible, and you really shouldn't have to do anything to make it work:
- It doesn't attempt instrumentation or update reporting if offline
- It uses /etc/hosts entries instead of DNS resolution if DNS resolution fails
However, it does not (yet) attempt to prevent docker pulls if a new docker image is required, so you'll want to make sure that you try a ddev start before going offline to make sure everything has been pulled.
If you have a project running when you're online (using DNS for name resolution) and you then go offline, you'll want to do a ddev restart to get the hostname added into /etc/hosts for name resolution.
You have general options as well:
In .ddev/config.yaml use_dns_when_possible: false will make ddev never try to use DNS for resolution, instead adding hostnames to /etc/hosts. You can also use ddev config --use-dns-when-possible=false to set this configuration option. In .ddev/config.yaml project_tld: example.com (or any other domain) can set ddev to use a project that could never be looked up in DNS. You can also use ddev config --project-tld=example.com
You can also set up a local DNS server like dnsmasq (Linux and macOS, brew install dnsmasq) or (unbound or many others on Windows) in your own host environment that serves the project_tld that you choose, and DNS resolution will work just fine. You'll likely want a wildcard A record pointing to 127.0.0.1 (on most ddev installations). If you use dnsmasq you must configure it to allow DNS rebinding.
If you're using a browser on Windows, accessing a DDEV project in WSL2, Windows will attempt to resolve the site name via DNS. If you do not have an internet connection, this will fail. To resolve this, update your C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts file.
Administrative privileges required
You must have administrative privileges to save the Windows hosts file.