Can ping hostname but not FQDN

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Level 1

9 points

Can ping hostname but not FQDN

Hi,

I am testing Yosemite (10.10.3) in our network and am running into a strange problem. I should start out by saying that all of the Macs in our network are bound to Active Directory and that our AD domain ends in ".local". On my test Yosemite Mac, which is bound to AD, if I try and ping just the host name of a computer such as "server" or I ping the IP address of the computer, the ping is successful. However if I try and ping the FQDN of the computer such as "server.domain.local" the ping fails with the message "Unknown Host". I do not have this problem with any of the 10.8 Macs on our network.

The 10.10.3 test Mac is set up to get it's IP info using DHCP. I have checked the DNS settings on the problem Mac and it has the proper IP addresses for our two DNS servers, as well as having the proper search domain "domain.local" listed.

Any thoughts?

OS X Yosemite (10.10.3), null

Posted on Jun 10, 2015 6:56 AM

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Answer 1

etresoft

Level 9

56,656 points

Jun 10, 2015 7:33 AM in response to tmcbride67

tmcbride67 wrote:

I am testing Yosemite (10.10.3) in our network and am running into a strange problem. I should start out by saying that all of the Macs in our network are bound to Active Directory and that our AD domain ends in ".local".

Hello tmcbride67,

I don't need to read anymore. Unfortunately, Microsoft has been promoting the use of ".local" for some time. It conflicts with the mDNS use of ".local". The older mDNSResponder on 10.8 may have had a hack to work better in a Windows environment and that hack may have been removed in Yosemite.

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Answer 2

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,739 points

Jun 10, 2015 7:51 AM in response to tmcbride67

The .local top-level domain is reserved for multicast DNS, which Apple calls "Bonjour." The restriction wasn't enforced before OS X 10.10, but it is now. Unicast domain names with that TLD will not resolve with the system in its default configuration.

If you have an Active Directory setup that can't be changed, and you absolutely must use unicast names in the .local TLD, see this discussion.

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Answer 3

tmcbride67 Author

Level 1

9 points

Jun 10, 2015 8:34 AM in response to Linc Davis

Thanks for the responses. I have been dealing with the issues of supporting Macs in a ".local" domain for the last 5 years. Usually in the past, there have been some work arounds (shortening the mDNS timeout, disabling IPv6, adding domain.local to the Macs' Search Domains etc.) to make the Macs at least usable in a ".local" domain, even if their network performance has never been quite what is should be. While I would never create a new AD domain that ends in ".local" these days, unfortunately, since ".local" has traditionally been the example Microsoft has used for setting up an internal AD domain, my company and thousands of others like it are stuck with a domain that ends in ".local". Since you can imagine the massive amount of both time and money it would take to rename a domain with close to a thousand users in it, especially one that uses Exchange for email services, it is more likely that the top brass will simply ban future Macs from our network. If you have almost a thousand PC users that function perfectly fine and only 50 or so Mac users that are having problems, it just isn't worth the time or money to accommodate the Macs.

Linc, I will have to look into your suggestion of creating our own launch daemon to execute "sudo discoveryutil mdnsactivedirectory yes"

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