Mavericks Upgrade Removes Java & DNS Domain Search

Yesterday when Apple prompted me with a new OS X 10.9 upgrade available to be installed, I followed  and upgraded. Guess what? ISSUES. I use PHPStorm for PHP, IntelliJ IDEA for Java and PyCharm CE for Python, but after the upgrade, none of them are working anymore. Because all three of them are from JetBrains and based on Java, so my immediate thought was that Java is missing. After Googling and it turned out to be the case, Mavericks simply removes your Java installation. To fix it, I downloaded and installed Java for OS X , and everything back to normal again. Another issue I found was that the DNS search domain has been disabled. So if you have:

search somedomain.net
nameserver 10.2.2.2

when  you try to

ssh test

It will not search “test.somedomain.net” anymore. To fix it, open up file:

sudo vim /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist

Add “<string>-AlwaysAppendSearchDomains</string>” into the following section:

<array>
<string>/usr/sbin/mDNSResponder</string>
<string>-AlwaysAppendSearchDomains</string>
</array>

And finally reload mDNSResponder service:

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist
sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist

This should enable you to perform DNS lookups the same way as was before.