Temporary Failure in Name Resolution- RH5

[erin]

Hello!

I recently registered a Red Hat 5 machine. It registered ok and was able to do a yum update. Now, yum update gives this error:

Loaded plugins: rhnplugin, security
There was an error communicating with RHN.
RHN support will be disabled.
Error communicating with server. The message was:
Temporary failure in name resolution
Could not retrieve mirrorlist <red hat mirror url here>error was
[Errno 4] IOError: <urlopen error (-3, 'Temporary failure in name resolution')>
[Errno 4] IOError: <urlopen error (-3, 'Temporary failure in name resolution')>
Trying other mirror.
Error: Cannot retrieve repository metadata (repomd.xml) for repository: rpmforge. Please verify its path and try again

I can ssh into the machine, and I can open up Firefox and browse the web. I have another Red Hat 5 machine set up and working fine, and I've checked that the /etc/yum.conf, /etc/sysconfig/rhn/up2date, .bash_profile, and /etc/hosts files are all the same (except for hostnames and ip addresses). I'm fairly new to Red Hat, and I don't know what other configuration files to check.

I've run yum clean all, but that hasn't helped.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
--Erin

[reed9]

Sounds like your nameserver is acting screwy.

Try using OpenDNS servers and see if the problem persists.

Also, if you've a registered license, I recommend utilizing RHEL's tech support.

[erin]

Thanks for replying, reed9. I just tried using OpenDNS servers, but the problem remains.

This is the second machine I've had this problem on. I solved it the first time with a complete reinstall, after several hours on the phone with Red Hat support. They were very nice, but they didn't solve the problem. Since I can't reinstall the operating system on this machine (without seriously irritating its owner), I need another option.

[reed9]

Are you using a proxy?

Try

su -
yum clean all
rpm --rebuilddb
yum update

[erin]

I seem to get the same output after the clean and the rpm rebuild:

[erin@atlas ~]$ su
Password:
[root@atlas erin]# yum clean all
Loaded plugins: rhnplugin, security
Cleaning up Everything
[root@atlas erin]# rpm --rebuilddb
[root@atlas erin]# yum update
Loaded plugins: rhnplugin, security
There was an error communicating with RHN.
RHN support will be disabled.
Error communicating with server. The message was:
Temporary failure in name resolution
Could not retrieve mirrorlist <red hat url here> error was
[Errno 4] IOError: <urlopen error (-3, 'Temporary failure in name resolution')>
<red hat url here>[Errno 4] IOError: <urlopen error (-3, 'Temporary failure in name resolution')>
Trying other mirror.
Error: Cannot retrieve repository metadata (repomd.xml) for repository: rpmforge. Please verify its path and try again
[root@atlas erin]#


I am using a proxy, and I have it configured correctly in the files I've mentioned previously. I'd guess that there's either a configuration file I've missed, or there's something I need to set up differently in the firewall. Do you have any suggestions on where I might find any missing configurations?

Thank you for your replies