DNS on RH 8.0

[SAJChurchey]

I installed RH 7.3 and it worked fine w/ DHCP and DNS on this network.  I did an "upgrade" to RH 8.0, and this has worked in the past on this same machine and network.  But now, suddenly the name resolution is suddenly fucked up.  Any ideas?

[voidmain]

It's hard to say without knowing more details. When you do a "service named restart" do you see any errors at the end of your /var/log/messages file indicating a problem?  Do you have an up to date root cache file? Is your /etc/resolv.conf file right? I wrote a tip on setting up DHCP and Dynamic DNS on Red Hat 8.0, don't know if it will help. You'll find it on my web site (Void's BS, like at bottom of message).

[edit]
Ooops, I thought I read you were running a DNS server and it wasn't working. Now I see it looks like you are only running a client. Sorry about that... Check your /etc/resolv.conf file and make sure it's properly configured.
[/edit]

[ January 17, 2003: Message edited by: void main ]

[SAJChurchey]

Well,

It appears that the resolve.conf files are identical except for this line

;generated by /sbin/dhclient-script

So, I checked for that script in /sbin but that script and neither dchclient or dhclient-script is not there for some reason.  I need to figure out a way to install dhclient.

[voidmain]

I want to know the actual contents of the /etc/resolv.conf. And you already have hdclient installed or you wouldn't be getting a DHCP address. The dhclient program is /sbin/dhclient. For more information on it do a "man dhclient".

The /etc/resolv.conf file contains the list of DNS servers that your clients should use to resolve addresses. During the time that your name resolution fails can you actually ping these servers? If so, can you do this on the command line:

Code: [Select]

Change "xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx" above to the first DNS server address listed in your /etc/resolv.conf. It should return the IP address for www.google.com. If these DNS servers are your providers DNS servers I would like to know their addresses (please copy/paste the contents of /etc/resolv.conf into a message). If I know the addresses I might possibly be able to see if there is anything wrong with them from my end.

[SAJChurchey]

Well, I'm pinging them just fine.  I can't really give u the IP addresses b/c i'm not a network admin here and I don't feel comfortable just giving that info out.  All i know is that no one else is having problems and my other linux boxes don't seem to be having troubles either.

[voidmain]

I don't know what to tell you then. It's sort of like going to a mechanic and telling him your car just stops in the middle of the road and then asking him what's wrong with it without giving any more information. Are the DNS servers in question internal to your company or are the external servers provided by a provider? I guess that really doesn't matter since you say your other Linux boxes aren't having a problem. I have been running Red Hat 8.0 on many machines since it came out with no troubles like this, and I haven't heard anyone else mention any problems similar to yours.

I assume that you can ping IP addresses that will not resolve and I also assume you can not resolve the IP addresses using the "host" or "nslookup" commands during the period that you are having difficulty. Is that true? If you can not ping the IP address of the DNS servers during the time that the problem exists then it's likely not a DNS issue but a lower level network problem. Either your network cards or drivers are having problems or you have a flaky cable or hub/switch or port on that hub/switch. At any rate it would come down to a level of trouble-shooting below the DNS level.

[SAJChurchey]

Well,

I had to pull a classical reinstall, although I wish I could have figured a way to solve the problem w/out resorting to that.  Thanx for the help.

Follow up:

I reinstalled, and it is still giving me the same problems w/ name resolution.  I'm sending in a support request to RH although they have not been much help in the past.

[ January 19, 2003: Message edited by: SAJChurchey ]