resolv.conf retry and retrans - do they work?

[Joseph Hoh]

I have had response time issues when we loose one of our DNS servers. It was suggested that I add the retry and retrans option to my reslov.conf file. I also installed patch PHCO_23706. However, these options do not seem to help. Has anyone had any luck with these options actually working?

[John Dvorchak]

As far as I know short of editing the resolv.conf file and either moving the failed DNS server down in order or removing it, there is not much you can do to get around the response issues. If a DNS server is not present on the LAN, the DNS request has to time out before it queries the second third...etc. The good news is that the change takes affect immediately and nothing has to be restarted.
Good luck.

[Stefan Farrelly]

We use the retry and timeout options in our .nslookuprc file (see man nslookup) and I can vouch they do work. We used to have a flaky primary DNS server and changing the timeout to 2 and retry to 1 in our .nslookuprc file meant a failed request quickly moved onto our secondary DNS server in 2 secs - and it worked a treat.

[Chuck Hilyard]

By changing the .nslookuprc does that affect all lookups, or just the nslookup software?

[A. Clay Stephenson]

I suggest that you try setting
the enviroment variables,
RES_RETRANS and RES_RETRY. They have higher precedence than the values in resolv.conf.