problems with bind 8.2.2-p5, solaris 2.6/sparc

Jim Reid jim at rfc1035.com
Tue Feb 22 18:58:20 UTC 2000


>>>>> "Ramon" == Ramon Alvarez Rayo <ralvarez at tmx.com.ni> writes:

    Ramon> when i do a query for a server only with the hostname
    Ramon> without domain, bind can not resolv, it is not take the
    Ramon> domain, with debug=on in nslookup i looked this:
    Ramon> how can i solve this problem ?

    Ramon> .... nslookup snipped ....

First of all, please use dig for DNS lookups. nslookup is a really bad
tool: avoid it if you possibly can.

By default, the BIND8 resolver will lookup the name as-is if it has a
dot in it. If the name has no dots, then the domain name(s) from
/etc/resolv.conf are appended before the lookup is done. The ndots
resolver option changes this behaviour. IIRC, the resolver library in
Solaris2.6 is based on ancient code from BIND4, like the name server
that's shipped with this OS. I believe this resolver library
automatically appends the domain name to any name that is being looked
up. It's not immediately clear from the nslookup output you provided
whose nslookup you used - BIND8's or Sun's - or what resolver library
it was using. It probably doesn't matter much anyway. How nslookup
does DNS lookups can be quite different from how anything else does
DNS lookups. This is one reason why nslookup is unsatisfactory.

If you're using Solaris, make sure /etc/nsswitch.conf is set up for
DNS. Also check the resolver library. Mr. Sun's is usually not very
good, so make try to use the one that comes with BIND8. Even if dig or
nslookup work as expected, lookups for other applications might
not. This is because the dig and nslookup in BIND8 should have been
linked directly with the BIND8 resolver library. Other applications
could be using the Sun shared resolver library along with all that
nsswitch.conf and nscd cruft for looking up hostnames and addresses.




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