DNS Weirdness

[Barry Margolin]

In article <bnbjva$10v8$1 at sf1.isc.org>,
Angela Williams  <awilliams at eoh.co.za> wrote:
>[root at gatekeeper /]# dig eoh.co.za
>
>; <<>> DiG 9.2.1 <<>> eoh.co.za
>;; global options:  printcmd
>;; Got answer:
>;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 24093
>;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 0
>
>;; QUESTION SECTION:
>;eoh.co.za.                     IN      A
>
>;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
>eoh.co.za.              10261   IN      SOA     eohns0.eoh.co.za. 
>awilliams.eoh.co.za. 2003102201 10815 3600 604800 38400
....
>And this is the top of the zone file itself.
>$ttl 38400
>eoh.co.za.      IN      SOA     eohns0.eoh.co.za. awilliams.eoh.co.za. (
>                        2003102301
>                        10815
>                        3600
>                        604800
>                        38400 )
>eoh.co.za.              IN      NS      eohns0.eoh.co.za.
>eoh.co.za.              IN      NS      eohns1.eoh.co.za.
>eoh.co.za.              IN      MX      10 eohmm.eoh.co.za.
>eohns0.eoh.co.za.       IN      A       196.30.202.139
>eohns1.eoh.co.za.       IN      A       196.23.47.200
>eohmm.eoh.co.za.        IN      A       196.23.47.15
>eohmes.eoh.co.za.       IN      A       196.23.47.16
>www.eoh.co.za.          IN      A       196.23.47.167

You don't have any A records for the name "eoh.co.za", so I'm not sure what
you think the problem is.  That name only has SOA, NS and MX records.  If
you want to be able to use it as a hostname, you need to add an A record:

eoh.co.za.  IN A  <some address>

>I've only look at this now as a sister company in Cape Town claims that they 
>cannot send mail to us as they cannot resolve the domain, mx record yes but 
>not domain!

Mail only requires an MX record that points to a valid hostname.  Your MX
record looks fine to me.

The only problem I see with your DNS is that you have an NS record pointing
to asp1.eoh.co.za (it isn't in the zone file you quoted above, but I see it
when I query your DNS manually), but that server isn't responding.  But
this shouldn't cause serious problems, because the other three servers seem
to be responding properly.

-- 
Barry Margolin, barry.margolin at level3.com
Level(3), Woburn, 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.