Lookup question

Michael Milligan milli at acmebw.com
Fri Aug 20 07:00:09 UTC 1999


>
> One of the reasons I asked the question is that in our domain different
> groups may
> make use of different Notes servers in other domains depending on the size
> of par-
> ticular offices.  Notes, apparently, doesnt make use of domains, so it
won't
> know
> what to do with a FQDN - only just the hostname.  Of course when my
primary
> receives the request, it will assume its in the local domain and of course
> wont be
> able to resolve it.

Notes brain damage is an unfortunate curse on many IT shops.  There are only
a few practical ways around it:

1) If you have less than about 6 (depending on your OS) domains
   that Notes servers live in, you can add all 6 domains to the search
   list on all your client's resolver configurations.  This can be painful,
   and very problematic -- the single-label names cannot be used for
   other systems in the other domains (which can be hard to enforce).

2) "Reserve" the single-label names of the Notes systems in all of
   the subdomains and alias the names across all of them.  Again,
   this is a policy thing and might be hard to enforce.

    a) Or, if all the domains the Notes servers live in share a common
       parent domain under your control, you can just put the parent
       domain in all the client resolver configs and alias the Notes
       system names at that level.

3) Create a domain just for Notes servers and add that domain to
   client resolver configurations as the first entry.  This assumes
   that other applications you worry about are DNS aware and are
   using fully-qualified domain names (FQDNs).  This may not be
   the case in your reality.

E.g. for (2),

Notes server name:  cheesy
Domains that clients live in:  gouda.com, queso.com, portabella.com

(Clients only have their local domain listed in resolver config, e.g.,
"qouda.com" and that's it.)

Notes server FQDN: cheesy.gouda.com
Entry in queso.com primary master:
  cheesy  IN  CNAME cheesy.gouda.com.
Entry in portabella.com primary master:
  cheesy  IN  CNAME cheesy.gouda.com.

Thus, cheesy.{gouda|queso|porabella}.com resolves to the Notes server.

E.g. for (2a), common parent,

Notes server name:  cheesy
Domains:  corp.gouda.com, east.gouda.com. west.gouda.com

(Clients have their local domain, and the parent domain "gouda.com" in their
resolver config)

Notes server FQDN:  cheesy.corp.gouda.com
Entry in gouda.com primary master:
  cheesy  IN  CNAME cheesy.corp.gouda.com.

Thus, cheesy.corp.gouda.com and cheesy.gouda.com resolve to the Notes
server.

>
> Also, many of our nameservers act as secondaries for each other.  What is
> the behaviour
> of named when it receives a request from a client in the local domain for
> /either/
> simply a hostname or a fqdn that resides in one of the domains that my
> primary is also a secondary for.  Will the named also check through the db
> files of those secondaries ?

Name servers *do not* add anything to queries to qualify them.  That is
strictly a client side issue.

Regards,
Mike

PS:  Domain name used in the above examples are for illustrative purposes
only.  Sorry if anyone who owns those domains is offended that I used them
in a Notes workaround example.  It won't happen again.

--
Michael Milligan - Acme Byte & Wire LLC - milli at acmebw.com




More information about the bind-users mailing list