Topic: URGENT ERROR Dns or something?!

[Anonymous]

Hi

I posted a query on the 1st July about Greg Zartmans e-smith as part of the domain how to, I went ahead and used it and all initially appeared ok.  The current setup is a Windows 2000 server as a domain controller using Active Directory and the main application server with the E-smith (Contribs ver 601) as the gateway, Dns and email server amongst other smaller jobs. I would like to scrap the Windows box, however there are two applications on it that use SQLserver.

I replaced an older version of E-smith (it self destructed) last Friday 2nd July with a new box and updated e-smith version with the installed and expanded template for joining the domain. As part of this install the E-smith saw and connected to the domain like a dream, however the users then experienced slowness and freezing on their workstaions occasionally. This has grown into a bigger problem now and they are experiencing slowness, loss of functions on there workstations, loss of printers and intermittent access to drives on the windows server.

The windows box also generated the following error in the event viewer

"Dynamic registration or deregistration of one or more DNS records failed because no DNS servers are available"

I'm guessing this could be part of the problem, but where do I look to rectify add or change settings so the Windows box can see the DNS. I may be completely off the track. I would appreciate any advice or suggestions on how to fix this problem.

RF

[ldkeen]

Hi RF,
We had to setup an almost identical setup to yours and ran into the same problem. My friend fixed the problem but he's away on holidays at the moment. I'll see if I can contact him for the fix. standby....
Lloyd

[fergro]

hi ldkeen

Thanks for the reply will be watching!

RF

[ldkeen]

Hi Fergro,
You were 100% right - it is a dns problem. What you need to do is add the win2k domain info into the server manager under the domains section. Our setup was the 2k box done the following:
PDC and file sharing
the sme box done most of the rest:
mail, web, dns, dhcp, backup (incl the 2k server) etc
We didn't set the 2k box up and so it had some dumb domain name (hq.com) but the sme box had a valid domain name so we just added both domain names to the smeserver and it works great now. Straight after we installed the sme box the network just about ground to a halt but this seemed to fix our problem. Let me know how you go.
Regards lloyd

[dmac]

If you are using Active Directory on the Windows 2000 box, then it will need to be the primary DNS Server (Active Directory need DNS setup on the Active Directory box) and its PRIMARY DNS address in the TCPIP parameters will need to point to itself.  If you continue to use the Windows 2000 box and Active Directory make sure that the DNS setup on your SME Box is as a proxy server only.  If your 2000 DNS is configured correctly, any request that cannot be resolved locally will be forwarded to the root hints through the SME Gateway.

Make sure that your DHCP server is handing off the Windows 2000 IP as the Primary DNS Server, since printing and drive access authentication is handled through Active Directory DNS.

HTH

Darin MacLachlan

[fergro]

Hi

Thank You for the advice, I will alter as recommended and will advise of the outcome. Hopefully it will be positive and there are no more surprises in store!

RF

[fergro]

Hi ldkeen and dmac

Thanks for all the help, have made suggested changes and now 'works sweet as a nut'.

RF