DNS failure

[Barry Margolin]

In article <199912131943.LAA07747 at isrv3.pa.vix.com>,
Marek  <marek at welshdragon.com> wrote:
>On Mon, 13 Dec 1999 18:22:18 GMT, Barry Margolin wrote:
>>In article <199912131548.HAA28147 at isrv3.pa.vix.com>,
>>Marek Narkiewicz  <marek at intercreations.com> wrote:
>>>I can successfully launch my named with no error messages. When i try to
>>>use it (using 
>>>nslookup) however I get this error message:
>>>*** Can't find server name for address 212.41.41.71: Non-existent host/domain
>>>and nslookup defaults to the second DNS server listed.
>>>Is this possibly because my server's host name doesn't match what is
>>>reurned by reverse 
>>>dns? As I am not authoritative for that I have to wait for my isp to
>>>update their settings.
>>
>>No, it means that there is no reverse DNS for the server's address at all.
>>nslookup won't use a default server unless that server is able to perform
>>reverse DNS of its own address.
>>
>
>In that case what courses of action are available to me? I have authority
>over only this 
>one machine and it's single ip address. Can I get my isp to delegate the
>reverse dns for 
>this one machine over to me or is that not possible. If not what can i do
>to run my own 
>dns server?

Yes, it's possible; just ask them to do it.  It's not necessary if you just
want to solve the nslookup problem.  You can configure your server to be
authoritative for its address without the ISP delegating it.  Your server
will be able to answer the reverse lookup when nslookup asks it, but other
servers on the Internet won't.  Whether this is important to you I can't
tell.

Anyway, what you need to do is:

In named.conf, add:

zone "71.41.41.212.in-addr.arpa" {
  type master;
  filename "db.reverse";
};

In the file db.reverse, put:

@ IN SOA yourserver.yourdomain.com. yourname.yourdomain.com. (
         ... ) ; All the usual SOA parameters
  IN NS  yourserver.yourdomain.com.
  IN PTR yourserver.yourdomain.com.

-- 
Barry Margolin, barmar at bbnplanet.com
GTE Internetworking, Powered by BBN, Burlington, MA
*** DON'T SEND TECHNICAL QUESTIONS DIRECTLY TO ME, post them to newsgroups.
Please DON'T copy followups to me -- I'll assume it wasn't posted to the group.