FW: [Fwd: Warning: could not send message for past 4 hours]

[Geoff Austin]

Mark,

Thanks for the pointers, I think I might now be making some progress.

The everydns servers were added yesterday in desperation to try and get
some external visibility. This seems to have worked, although I set up
the entries incorrectly! Hopefully that is now correct. I added an A
record for w-sys.co.uk to dns and mail, but I believe there was already
an MX record there!

After the changes, I used dig to look at various British Telecom name
servers and one Swisscom name server to see if I had fixed the problem.
Confusingly these are the results: (edited for clarity)

dig @ns1.bt.net w-sys.co.uk MX 
w-sys.co.uk.            1242    IN      SOA     ns1.everydns.net.
hostmaster.w-sys.co.uk. 1075402448 16384 2048 1048576 2560

dig @ns2.bt.net w-sys.co.uk MX 
uk.                     95228   IN      NS      NSB.NIC.uk.
uk.                     95228   IN      NS      NS1.NIC.uk.
uk.                     95228   IN      NS      NS2.NIC.uk.
uk.                     95228   IN      NS      NS3.NIC.uk.
uk.                     95228   IN      NS      NS4.NIC.uk.
uk.                     95228   IN      NS      NS5.NIC.uk.
uk.                     95228   IN      NS      NSA.NIC.uk.

dig @ns3.bt.net w-sys.co.uk MX
w-sys.co.uk.            85779   IN      MX      10 mail.w-sys.co.uk.
w-sys.co.uk.            85779   IN      NS      ns2.everydns.net.
w-sys.co.uk.            85779   IN      NS      ns3.everydns.net.
w-sys.co.uk.            85779   IN      NS      ns4.everydns.net.
w-sys.co.uk.            85779   IN      NS      mail.w-sys.co.uk.
w-sys.co.uk.            85779   IN      NS      dns.w-sys.co.uk.
w-sys.co.uk.            85779   IN      NS      ns1.everydns.net.

dig @ns1.ip-plus.net w-sys.co.uk MX
w-sys.co.uk.            84743   IN      MX      10 mail.w-sys.co.uk.
w-sys.co.uk.            84743   IN      NS      ns1.everydns.net.
w-sys.co.uk.            84743   IN      NS      ns2.everydns.net.
w-sys.co.uk.            84743   IN      NS      ns3.everydns.net.
w-sys.co.uk.            84743   IN      NS      ns4.everydns.net.
w-sys.co.uk.            84743   IN      NS      dns.w-sys.co.uk.
w-sys.co.uk.            84743   IN      NS      mail.w-sys.co.uk.
mail.w-sys.co.uk.       171135  IN      A       82.68.177.92
ns1.everydns.net.       164939  IN      A       64.158.219.3
ns2.everydns.net.       164939  IN      A       216.218.240.206
ns3.everydns.net.       164939  IN      A       80.84.249.169
ns4.everydns.net.       164939  IN      A       63.219.183.200
dns.w-sys.co.uk.        171135  IN      A       82.68.177.91


ns1.ip-plus.net gives the results I was expecting... which is much
better than yesterday when it just timed out. 

Do you know why ns1.bt.net and ns2.bt.net should give such strange
answers?




On Thu, 2004-01-29 at 12:02, Mark_Andrews at isc.org wrote:
> 	Firstly workout which machines are supposed to be serving
> 	w-sys.co.uk then make sure that they *all* have the same
> 	zone content.
> 
> 	If you remove dns.w-sys.co.uk and/or mail.w-sys.co.uk
> 	from the delegation don't forget to also remove the
> 	associated host records.
> 
> 	dns.w-sys.co.uk and mail.w-sys.co.uk don't have A or MX
> 	records for w-sys.co.uk which is what is causing the
> 	intermittent mail failures.
> 
> 	Mark
> 
> 	From the parent servers.
> 
> w-sys.co.uk.            172800  IN      NS      dns.w-sys.co.uk.
> w-sys.co.uk.            172800  IN      NS      mail.w-sys.co.uk.
> w-sys.co.uk.            172800  IN      NS      ns1.everydns.net.
> w-sys.co.uk.            172800  IN      NS      ns2.everydns.net.
> w-sys.co.uk.            172800  IN      NS      ns3.everydns.net.
> w-sys.co.uk.            172800  IN      NS      ns4.everydns.net.
> 
> 	From dns.w-sys.co.uk and mail.w-sys.co.uk
> 
> w-sys.co.uk.            3H IN NS        dns.w-sys.co.uk.
> w-sys.co.uk.            3H IN NS        mail.w-sys.co.uk.
> 
> 	From ns[1234].everydns.net
> 
> w-sys.co.uk.            1D IN NS        ns1.everydns.net.
> w-sys.co.uk.            1D IN NS        ns2.everydns.net.
> w-sys.co.uk.            1D IN NS        ns3.everydns.net.
> w-sys.co.uk.            1D IN NS        ns4.everydns.net.

> --
> Mark Andrews, ISC
> 1 Seymour St., Dundas Valley, NSW 2117, Australia
> PHONE: +61 2 9871 4742                 INTERNET: Mark.Andrews at isc.org