dns server and router

**kpzani** · 04-07-2003

hi everyone

right in work i have:
small network running xp
rh 8 samba pc with bind running as a dns
so that i can use my intranet servers (apache) and lotus domino.

just installed ADSL router which usb adsl modem plugs into. plug router into hub. everyone now has internet access.

problem. when configuring clients to access the router have to set the dns server and gateway settings to be the router.

is there a way of configuring bind to pass unsolved requests to the router?
therefore I can set the clients to dns from the rh box. and that will pass requests onto the router if they are not internal.

the Router does not have a static ip from my isp but performs nat automatically for me. I have set each of the clients up with static ips and domain names in the form. pc.titan.iscavision.com, server.titan.iscavision.com etc. but iscavision.com is our external domain name that points to our web server hosted by dsvr.co.uk.

thanks

kris

**genlee** · 04-07-2003

Why not add a secondary dns to the clients as the router and have the primary dns as the rh8 box.

**Dolda2000** · 04-07-2003

That doesn't really work. In my experience (I might be wrong, but I did recently experience this), the secondary-and-so-forth DNS servers are only checked if the first one doesn't reply (ie. can be assumed to be down). If the first one returns an error (such as the domain cannot be found, in this case), that is still authoritative, and the rest of the servers won't be tried.
Instead, set up a root hint for BIND pointing at the router.
My setup for this follows; modify it to suit your environment:

/etc/named.conf:

Code:

...

zone "."
&#123;
    type hint;
    file "root.hint";
&#125;;

...

/etc/named/root.hint:

Code:

.       3600000 IN      NS      dns.bonet.se
dns.bonet.se.   3600000         A       212.181.54.2
.       3600000 IN      NS      dns2.bonet.se
dns2.bonet.se.  3600000         A       212.181.54.3

**kpzani** · 04-08-2003

Yes dolda you are correct. i tried that first.

I'll try the named thing and post the results.

cheers

guys

**kpzani** · 04-08-2003

Hi guys

right then first thing. didn't work named would start. must be my error.

can some one explain the format of named files. are they space sensitive should i use tabs etc. i use gedit to create them currently.

anyway. i have send the two files to my web server. can anyone see what is wrong. I think named.conf is ok I have just sent it up for completeness.

check them here http://iscavision.com/errors/named.conf
and
http://iscavision.com/errors/root.hint

thanks for this guys

**Dolda2000** · 04-08-2003

Are you saying that named does start properly, but it doesn't work anyway.
It might be that recursive queries are disallowed. Try adding "recursing yes;" to your options section.

**kpzani** · 04-08-2003

sorry i meant that named doesn't start. gives not useful error of error starting named.

i will try the recursive thing now.

**kpzani** · 04-08-2003

nope that still doesn't allow named to start

**Dolda2000** · 04-08-2003

What kind of errors does it give? Also check /var/log/messages, since that's where named outputs most of its errors.

**kpzani** · 04-08-2003

in var/log/messages

server name[17367]: starting BIND 9.2.1 -u named
unknown option recursing
loading config: failure

so remove recursing and we get
zone '.' already exists

it must be in the named.custom file. so moving on
located file and commented out existing hint file reference which pointed to named.ca (dunno what this is must have been made by the rh bind config gui)

restarted named. successful

changed tcpip settings on clients so gateway is router and dns is rh box.
cannot locate server for web browsing.

could problem be:
my router does not have a fqdn so my root.hint file might be wrong
it reads
. 3600000 IN NS router
router. 3600000 A 150.1.1.2

is this ok?

Thread Tools

Display

dns server and router

secondary dns

errors

correction

recursing

errors

Posting Permissions