Newbie Question

[Joseph S D Yao]

On Fri, Jul 07, 2000 at 10:22:23PM -0700, slomo wrote:
> Must a DNS server have a reverse lookup entry for it's own domain name
> to work properly?
> 
> I have a server  which seems to work properly when queried directly
> (and yes it is registered).  But, I get a 
> 
> *** Can't find server name for address 63.XXX.XX.126: Non-existent
> domain
> 
> error when trying to use it as the default DNS server for nslookup
> from another computer.
> 
> I'm on a CIDR network so providing support for reverse lookups would
> require effort on my ISP's part (always a headache) and I would like
> to aviod it if possible.

No.  'nslookup' requires this.  You can get around it by using
'nslookup' interactively, and giving it the server name manually.  But
this doesn't affect regular lookups.  [This is one of the reasons why
many people deprecate 'nslookup' in favour of, e.g., 'dig'.]

It's still a good idea to have reverse lookups.  If you can't do
RFC2317, and you can't get your ISP to register your names, but you
don't need to see your co-customers' names, then have your local name
server declare itself authoritative for the entire /24, and just
declare names for yourself.  This WILL NOT BE SEEN by anyone outside
yourselves; and if this would cause problems, you should NOT do this.
This is why you should try for one of the other two solutions first.

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