I was attempting to solve an issue ("/var/log/msmtp.log: permissions denied" error when attempting to send mail using msmtp) when I did this:

> chmod -R 770 /var

After that, my machine would not resolve domain names via cURL. (ping also fails) But, oddly, I can enter domain names into Safari and visit any web pages w/o a problem...

I'm actually not sure if the chmod command is the cause of the problem, but I suspect it is.

Also, if I ls -l on /var (or /private/var) it doesn't seem that any of the subdirectories or files there actually changed permission, but there are many, so I can't say that conclusively...

Incidentally, I fixed the original error (msmtp.log permission denied) by setting TMPDIR=/tmp in my local environment (bash). Now the error goes away, but I get this error:

msmtp: cannot locate host domainname.org: nodename nor servname provided, or not known

Any ideas about how to go about getting DNS working again?