How to redirect VM DNS question to host machine localhost dnsmasq

My local network shcema is something like this: internet (WAN) | router host IP (resolv.conf) | | +------- eth0 - br0 - tap0 - VM (resolv.conf) | | localnet localhost (dnsmasq) (.home) My host computer is used mainly for testing virtual machines. The goal is to let the VM to see the local net only, not to get DNS from the WAN, but get it from dnsmasq, which is configured to listen on host lo interface and to know just hosts from the localnet: pc1.home pc2.home www.home data.home printer.home ... I succefully configured the dnsmasq to listen on tcp/udp 127.0.0.1:53 on the host machine, and check it by getting answer form host cli: # dig www.google.com ... 142.251.36.68 (ANSWER 1) and # dig @127.0.0.1 www.google.com ... (ANSWER 0) # dig @127.0.0.1 www.home ... 192.168.1.2 (ANSWER 1) I set the ip_forwarding in various ways # echo "1" > /proc/sys/net/ip4/conf/all/forwarding # echo "1" > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/tap0/route_localnet Then I tried to compose the iptables rule: # iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i tap0 -p tcp --dport 53 -j DNAT --to-destination 127.0.0.1:53 # iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i tap0 -p udp --dport 53 -j DNAT --to-destination 127.0.0.1:53 followed by check # iptables -v -t nat -L pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination 0 0 DNAT udp -- tap0 any anywhere anywhere udp dpt:domain to:127.0.0.1:53 0 0 DNAT tcp -- tap0 any anywhere anywhere tcp dpt:domain to:127.0.0.1:53 But while running my virtual linux, the DNS is still answered from router nameserver listed in /etc/resolv.conf. Well, you can advice me to rewrite the resolv.conf of virtual machine manulaly, but as I test the installation of many VM it is annoying to do that each time, and it is hardly to say, what to write there, because the dnsmasq listens at localhost of the host machine. Hence the content of VM resolv.conf like nameserver 127.0.0.1 could be very confusing and useless. I tried to capture some packets with Wireshark, but it just showed me that no redirection takes place, but not why.