DNS - server has trouble resolving

Hi

First thing I would look at is making sure the first IP Address in the DNS Servers field of the Network Preferences Pane on the Server itself is the Server’s own IP Address. You could then run either the host or dig commands to see what you get back:

host yourservername.yourdomain.com

It should return its own IP address then follow up with

host ip address

It should then return the Reverse Pointer to show its mapped the hostname to its IP Address, basically qualifying the NS and A Records.

Running the dig command should show you question and answer feedback. You could also inspect the zone files themselves to and make sure that they are in there.

cd /var/named
ls

You should see the default localhost.zone, named.ca and named.local along with a file that has your domain name as well as a file that begins with db.in.addr.arpa which would be the Reverse Pointer Record. You can inspect the contents of the file by keying in:

more name of file.

You should also check /etc/named.conf and make sure its referencing the files in /var/named.

It would not be a disaster for you to stop the DNS Service, sort out the configuration, restart the server and restart the DNS Service.

Tony

Problem number one. You don't have a domain set for your machine that you're issuing the nslookup command from. Therefore when you issue the *nslookup server* command, it is looking for server.root-of-the-internet and not server.yourdomain.com. It is a Non-eXistent domain.

You are probably getting a SERVFAIL on the forward lookup on the FQDN because of problems with the company.com zone file. I say this, because your server responds correctly to the Reverse query.

Also

nslookup has been phased out for a while now. Use dig instead.

If you don't want to add your DNS server to the search list in System Preferences, you can specify the query server every time you dig:

dig @192.168.3.2 server.company.com

When you want to do reverse lookups, you need the "-x" switch:

dig @192.168.3.2 -x 192.168.3.2

Since I am having exactly the same problem, how do you fix it for a private network?
i.e. I'm doing this on a network myinternalnetwork.private. Obviously, I have no such domain registered with NetworkSolutions or wherever, and since I am only interested in getting the DNS functional on the internal network so that I can do network homes, how would I get this to work? The internal network is connected to the internet through a router.

The network homes still won't work because the DNS is still not resolving properly.

thank you

Hi John, have a look over at http://www.wazmac.com/serversnetwork/fileservers/osxserver_setup/osxserver104setup.htm
and 1. Install Server Software & DNS. This I think will give you what you're looking for.

Cheers

Hi

However DNS is configured on the LAN side (the private side) of your router should have no bearing on what happens on the WAN side (the public side). Unless of course you configure the firewall to allow external requests to be handled by your private network. There would also have to be some manipulation of your Domain’s Public DNS Records. In your case you are not even using a recognized or registered domain.

Setting up internal DNS Services can be confusing however Apple do make it a fairly simple and painless process if all you want is simple DNS Services. This is true for 10.4 Server (if its 10.5 the goalposts have moved somewhat). What is available in the GUI should be more than enough for an Open Directory Master Role with all that that entails, see this link:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=4497792&#4497792

Its specifically for creating an OD Master from scratch as well as Networked Home Folders and Managed Preferences. What is described should bring a greater understanding as well as possibly allowing you to get over the problems you are seeing. What is described makes no allowances for any other server being on the network.

Hope this helps, Tony

Thank you for the link.
It does have some info that I didn't already have. I used the Mac OS X Server Essentials book from the Apple Training Series to set up the server.
unfortunately, neither the link from your post or the other poster's link contained troubleshooting information.
As it stands now, the DNS shows no errors in the log. When I check it with changeip, it claims everything is fine. I did not set up the DNS forwarders like your post suggested and just used the default setup. All of my machines which are set to use my local DNS for their DNS services can resolve addresses like www.apple.com or www.afp548.com etc.
The only thing which is not working is that if I type in
host 192.168.1.104
it returns
254.16.16.172.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer host172-16-16-254.in-addr.marvin.myhouse.private

If I type in
host marvin.myhouse.private
it returns
SERVFAIL Can't find address.

Of course, this is also the one thing I need in order to get Network homes working.

Thanks again for all your help
John

I have the exact same issue, I need it for directory access, luckily for me my router handles reverse dns but that is not a solution, it really seems as though the dns server cannot see the hosted domains. running change ip in terminal comes back totally clean, server listed as it's self as first DNS server in Network prefs... Quite strange... any suggestions most helpful....

Mine finally started working on the DNS front. I'm not sure exactly what did it. I'd reconfigured it from scratch, and then added itself into the machine records when that didn't work. Then when I took it back out of the machine records and rebooted, it started working. It has continued to work through several reboots now.

oh.. I just noticed that you say that server is listed as the first DNS server in network prefs. I found that it had to be the only DNS server in Network Prefs. Maybe that will help.

So, now if I could just get the Network homes and logins to work on OD which I had hoped getting DNS working would solve.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1296921