BC_Programmer,
Thank you for your respectful and earnest response!
When you said,What may be occurring is that dig uses the configuration file directly, but the configuration is being rewritten by some other part of the system because the service was not restarted." I believe is truly spot-on.
I looked in the /etc/systemd/network/ directory... has nothing in it. Empty.
So... I had spent 5 or 6 hours trying to find the answer BEFORE I came to my friends at CH. And after I made the above post, I went back to searching the Web for another 2-3 hours. And lo-and-behold, I did manage to find this code that does "lock" Debian DNS configurations, which I will post in order to help others that may need this info in the future:
create /etc/dhcp/dhclient-enter-hooks.d/nodnsupdate file, and add this script to it:
#!/bin/sh
make_resolv_conf(){
:
}
The final steps are to save and close the file, then set permissions:
chmod +x /etc/dhcp/dhclient-enter-hooks.d/nodnsupdate
Again, BC, I appreciate your help. At least you take the time to try and understand the questions put to you, as your response illustrates. Cheers, mate!