Hostname and DNS

Hi

There was no need to change the host name, but apart from that it sounds OK.

I think so. All I can do is give you an example of a working DNS that I have here.

Server’s host name is: server.local
Server’s fqdn name is: server.pretendco.org.com
Server’s IP address is: 172.16.1.254

If you launch terminal and issue the host command you will get this:
server.pretendco.org.com has address 172.16.1.254
host 172.16.1.254
254.1.16.172.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer host172-16-1-254.in.addr.pretendco.org.com.

I think you just need to change the server’s .local name back to what it was in the Sharing Preferences pane as well as the relevant place in Server Admin and you should be back to normal.

Hi

My local DNS works forward and reverse, but I'm
getting errors in my server log because my local DNS
name does not match my external DNS name (of course).
I cannot use changeip "changeip" to correct this
because it does not change the primary address from
external to internal.

Unless you absolutely know what you are doing and fully understand the implications of running external DNS services I would not advise doing this. There seems to be some confusion here regarding DNS. The DNS Service available in OSX Server GUI is for internal use only. You can use a real world domain name to run DNS services locally and internally, these should not interfere with external DNS services.

For example www.mydomain.com does not exist locally unless you want it too and unless you point the relevant DNS (external) record to the fixed IP address at your site. Your ISP or the people who host your domain hold and maintain your public DNS Records.

In your example above, your IP and FQDN are external,
right?

Wrong

I'm not running external DNS (or I don't want to) and
need only my internal DNS to resolve to my server's
internal IP name.

If you follow the example given then there is no need to. An example of an external DNS is: www.apple.com which resolves to 17.149.160.10, your server would be servername.apple.com and would resolve to 192.168.1.254, this is for internal use only. You could never resolve www.apple.com to a private IP address. IANA reserve three IP address ranges for exclusive private internal use, these ranges are 192.168.x.x, 10.x.x.x and 172.16.x.x, these should never be used as external IP addresses. Every other IP address is for external (public) use.

There is no external DNS for your domain that I can see, if I run dig I get this:

; <<>> DiG 9.3.2 <<>> xserve.clarissa.com
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NXDOMAIN, id: 27689
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;xserve.clarissa.com. IN A

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
clarissa.com. 1700 IN SOA pdns1.ultradns.net. root.cbsig.net. 2002052902 43200 1200 1209600 1800

;; Query time: 36 msec
;; SERVER: 192.168.1.1#53(192.168.1.1)
;; WHEN: Fri May 11 16:51:38 2007
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 102

This seems to indicate to me there is no external DNS IP address resolving to the hostname xserve.clarissa.com. Where are you getting the 64.105.x.x address from?

the 64.105- address is my public ip. that's why i'm
wondering about. should it show my local ip?

Yes of course.

The people hosting your domain will keep DNS records for your domain as it appears publicly, this will involve mapping clarissa.com to your 64.104 address.

Looking at the Whois information for this domain the registrant is Viacom International, 1515 Broadway, NYC. If this is not you then you could be in serious trouble. The Domain Servers for this domain are PDNS1.ULTRADNS.NET 204.74.108.1 and PDNS2.ULTRADNS.NET 204.74.109.1 amongst others. You can’t decide to map an unregistered domain name to a public IP address without letting the relevant authorities know first.

If you launch terminal and key in hostname you should see ‘xserver.local’, if you key in host ‘xserve.clarissa.com’ you will see ‘xserve.clarissa.com has address 192.168.2.1’, there is a distinction between the two commands, you should change the .local from what it is now to ‘xserve.local’, you do this in the Sharing Preference pane as well as Server Admin, there is no need to run changeip.

There was no need for you to have changed it in the first place. The ‘hostname’ command prints the current name (not its fqdn) of the host system, the ‘host’ command is the DNS lookup utility. If you understand this important distinction and make the change I advise the annoying error message should disappear after a restart.

1 and 2 : xserve.clarissa.com


In sharing setup you enter only the (host)name (which probably also should be the same in bonjour - doesn't matter for DNS though), in your case : xserve

DNS/hostname seem to be case sensitive so keep all records the same(small caps?).

In Network setup you should enter clarrissa.com as the search domain.

And the server (and all LAN users) should only use 192.168.2.1 as the DNS in Network setup (and in DHCP config ofcourse). For greater lookup speed you probably want to use ISP DNSes as forwarders in /etc/named.conf

If this is the same domainname as your public domainname you have to enter all public IPs used (WWW, FTP and such) in your DNS config too.


If the server is the gw/(NAT)router you need to use the public IP in DNS for the hostname. I don't know of any other way to do it.


To comment on an earlier reply:

DNS in OS X isn't in there only for private DNS use (the DNS GUI in Server Admin in Tiger is of "limited" use though).
The DNS is private if the server DNS is meant for LAN use only and doesn't become public even if running with a public IP (can be controlled with firewall rules if you want).
To become a public DNS for the domain it must be "delegated" from the topdomain used and a second (backup/slave) DNS must be available "somewhere" for the domain in question.

We have a customer hosting about 30 domains on OS X/Bind (server is master/primary / a client is slave/secondary).

If the server is on a /24 netmask there should be no complaints in the logs if DNS is configured correctly. The DNS GUI in Tiger Server Admin doen't seem to cope well with other netmasks and you would have to use the CLI instead.
We had to do it when using a /25 netmask as the delegated reverse zone used has a special "name/look". We also had to enter the hostname in /etc/hostconfig to get IT right. The DNS GUI in Panther was better in my opinion. We are probably going to test the Webmin DNS GUI for Tiger but is seems all GUIs are limited in some way and you have to use the CLI for "special settings".


Also 172.16.0/12 : 172.16.0.0-172.31.255.255 is the third IP-range reserved for private use.