Getting Internet Sharing to work on OSX 10.8

I noticed that the Internet Sharing functionality didn’t work on my Macbook Air (running OSX 10.8 - Mountain Lion). This is because the Air’s DNS server (BIND) isn’t configured correctly.

For me, the fix was pretty simple. Edit /etc/com.apple.named.proxy.conf by running sudo nano /etc/com.apple.named.proxy.conf in a terminal, and change

forward first;

to

forward only;

Then turn Internet Sharing off and on again.

The annoying thing is that OSX seems to restore the BIND config the next time you turn Internet Sharing off, so you need to remember to change it each time.