DNS running but not responding

[Jean Samarani]

Hi,


I have main issue that although the named process is running and listening on port UDP 53. I am not able to query it even locally. When I run nslookup command on the machine itself, it times out and I get the below message.

dns3:/etc #nslookup
*** Can't find server name for address 10.1.156.55: Server failed
*** Default servers are not available
Using /etc/hosts on: dns3


any idea ??

Appreciate your support.

Jean

[Steven Schweda]

> *** Can't find server name for address 10.1.156.55: Server failed

Is 10.1.156.55 the address of the system you
expected to be using as the DNS server? Is
that the address of "the machine itself"?

Does "/etc/hosts" provide a name for address
10.1.156.55? Is it in the DNS data base?

[Jean Samarani]

yes, The machine has two IP addresses and Named is listening on both of them.

yes it's defined in the /etc/hosts file.

let me know if you require any other informations.

[Jean Samarani]

Could be that it's only checking the hosts files without using the DNS?

[Matti_Kurkela]

Is your named process listening on 127.0.0.1?

Look into /var/adm/syslog/syslog.log - if named has a problem, it usually writes messages about it to the system log.

MK

[Jean Samarani]

yes named is running on all IPs not only the loopback address.

[Jean Samarani]

And to answer the 2nd question question, there is nothing wrong in the syslog messages. it shows that named is loading named.conf and listening on the IP addresses without any errors.

[RickT_1]

Jean,

What does your nsswitch.conf file look like?

Rick

[Jean Samarani]

Hi Rick,


The file didn't exist it at the beginning at all. I tried to create it but I am not sure if I have included the correct entry. I tried to put the following entry

hosts: files dns nis

Do you think is this the problem?

Could you please advise?

thanks a lot!

[RickT_1]

Normally you would just copy the one that you want from the samples nsswitch.dns in the /etc directory. Look at the "nsswitch.dns" file in /etc and compare to how yours is setup for the hosts line.

Hope this helps.

Rick