Topic: DNS Resolve Issue

[Robert Devantier]

Version: Fresh install, SME Server V5 Update 2.
Install mode: Server only

I have a fresh install, configured in server-only mode (say, x.y.z.5) with a defined gateway (x.y.z.1) and the authoritive DNS server on x.y.z.2 for x.y.z.  E-smith is configured with the gateway and the DNS server.

The problem: E-smith can resolve all DNS names not contained on x.y.z.  Anything it tries to resolve on x.y.z, it uses itself.  So I have all my printers defined on the authoritive DNS (so the multiple servers I have can see them).  But when somebody prints via this e-smith box, the job goes nowhere because e-smith cannot resolve the name.

Temporarily, I can put the printer names into e-smith so it knows the IP numbers.  But this will still break any of my users who are using e-smith as a proxy to browse web servers on my x.y.z subnet.  The proxy will not be able to resolve those names, and my users will think my servers are down and start calling me.  I do not want to maintain DNS tables on multiple e-smith boxes in addition to the DNS master.

Any thoughts, clues, fixes?

Thanks...
Robert Devantier

[Chris O'Donovan]

I think that what you want is to have the SME server act as a "slave" to the "master" DNS server. This option is possible with linux but not through the SME UI.

I don't think that this is a trivial change. Check the man page for named.conf for more information.

Chris

[Robert Devantier]

Thanks for the info.  Looks like SMEv5 is not capable of sitting on the same domain name with other boxes.  I guess the easy workaround is to assign each server its own sub-domain name.

So under "mydomain.com", I'll have one server as "server1.es1.mydomain.com" and the other one will be "server2.es2.mydomain.com".  Then my primary/secondary NT boxes can live under "mydomain.com" and have a CNAME for server?.mydomain.com point to the FQDN of each respective box.

Hopefully this won't mess up the LPR printing.  I want people to print to the LPR queue on a box, as "printer@server1.mydomain.com".  Hopefully SME will tolerate it.  Off to test that now...

Robert Devantier

[Bruce Friedman]

I believe I have resolved this with the help of the man page for named.conf

I don't claim to know the details of bind, but this worked for me - please comment if you know of a better solution.

Because this edited /home/dns/etc/named.conf, it is a TEMPORARY solution only.  The next time the templates are instantiated, these changes will be destroyed.

I will try to figure out the correct template change later...

Step 1: Configure your system from the admin panel (i.e. login as admin) and set up the master DNS on your network - in my case, that is 192.168.2.4

Step 2: Edit /home/dns/etc/named.conf and make the following changes:

            under the section commented with
                       #----------------------------------------------------
                       # local network PTR records
                       #----------------------------------------------------

            you must remove the lines that look like

                       type master;
                       file "named.localnetwork";

           and
                       type master;
                       file "db.";  

          replace them each (2 instances) with

                       type forward;

Step 3: restart named by typing at the shell:
         
          /etc/rc.d/init.d/named stop

That's it - named will restart automatically and should work for you.