non existent host/domain

[Joseph S D Yao]

On Thu, Apr 27, 2000 at 11:29:21AM -0700, R Joseph Wright wrote:
> On 27 Apr 2000, Barry Margolin wrote:
> 
> > In article <Pine.BSF.4.21.0004262224050.1183-100000 at manatee.mammalia.org>,
> > R Joseph Wright  <rjoseph at speakeasy.org> wrote:
> > >
> > >I just set up a primary dns server using Bind 8 on FreeBSd 4.0.  I also
> > >just registered my domain, got my secondaries set up with
> > >granitecanyon.com, etc.  So, I'm set, sort of.  The main problem that is
> > >happening is I get this when I do 'nslookup mammalia.org':
> > >
> > >Server:  localhost.org
> > >Address:  127.0.0.1
> > >
> > >*** localhost.org can't find mammalia.org: Non-existent host/domain
> > 
> > What do you expect this to show?  You don't have an A record for
> > mammalia.org in db.mammalia.  The only A records you have are for
> > ns.mammalia.org and manatee.mammalia.org.
> 
> You mean I'm supposed to create an A record for my zone?  None of the
> configurations I've looked at have anything like that.  What if I had more
> than one nameserver on different machines with different addresses?  Would
> each of those also have an A record for the zone with its own address?
> 
> Since the zone is already implied on the left side of the A record entry,
> would it look something like this?:
> 			IN	A	216.231.50.6
> I'm probably missing something totally obvious, but this just seems a bit
> weird. 

A lot of people do, in fact, want to have an IP address associated with
their domain names.  I'm with you - it seemed a bit weird at first.  I
guess you pay a bit less for adverts without the "www.".  ;-)

No, there is nothing requiring you to have an A record for your domain
in your zone file.  Nothing at all.  Your question, though, would have
presupposed that you wanted an A record for your domain, if you had
understood that the default record that 'nslookup' returns is an A
record.  If you just want any record that the name server might happen
to know [which, for one of the domain's name servers, should be all],
then enter:
	nslookup -type=any mammalia.org

The 'nslookup' program wants to do things that look like what "people"
expect.  Consequently, when debugging BIND entries, it does some things
that you might not expect.  If you want to see the anatomical details,
use 'dig'.

Another problem you have, from my point of view, is that the ".org"
name servers disavow any knowledge of you or your operations.  ;->
Have you registered with them or fed them money lately?

OBTW, HINFO records are nice for your personal reference, but are
generally easily outdated [when you update the system but forget to
update the record], and might give crackers ideas.  Your choice whether
they're worth it to you.

OBTW 2, ns.mammalia.org has a reverse DNS of rjoseph-0.dsl.speakeasy.net,
which has no forward DNS.  This is merely disconcerting unless you are
trying to access a site which requires matching forwards and reverse
DNS.

-- 
Joe Yao				jsdy at cospo.osis.gov - Joseph S. D. Yao
COSPO/OSIS Computer Support					EMT-B
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