Summary: DNS server/client software keeps resetting

[Ron Bramblett]

Well after dealing with this restarting named over and over for about a
month, I finally asked the right question.

Here is my original question::

    I have a small problem. Everyday the first thing that I must do is
to edit my /etc/resolv.conf file and point my DNS back to my in-house
(Balsa) DNS server.

I have intalled RedHat Linux 6.2 on a Gateway 2000 Pentium 180 machine.
I have had dns setup on this machine for quite some time. This problem
did not start happening until I installed RedHat 6.2 on it. Every day my
first job is to go into the /etc/resolv.conf file and set the DNS
pointer back to my BALSA address. Every day about midnight I guess the
resolv.conf file keeps going back to pointing back to my ISP DNS server,
(instead of staying put as my in-house DNS Server). How do I get it to
stay permanently??
I have a 56k modem that I use to connect to the internet. It is always
on. I use PPP to connect. I have no other routes out, except I have a
NIC which will connect to other computers in our network.
Any ideas would be appreciated.

I got 4 responses.

             Brian Ventura <water at bighead.org>
You are probably getting info from a DHCP server that is overwriting the
resolv.conf.  When you dial the PPP, does it write out a new
resolv.conf?  Are you using DHCP for the primary IP?  Does it change
immediately after a dialup?  What about a disconnect (like pull the
phone cord from the wall type, not a nice
shutdown).  If neither of these, then look for a cron job and also check
the time stamp on the file to see if it is exactly the same time every
day.  Also does it occur after a reboot?  Check linuxconf, it does weird
things..

        James Scott Boorn <jboorn at seatab.com>
Check /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-ppp0 and make sure you have
PEERDNS="no" and not PEERDNS="yes".  If you did not use the RedHat tools
be sure to check that you are not using the 'usepeerdns' pppd option.

         Jim Reid <jim at rfc1035.com>
Presumably this is the Linux version that runs a daily cron job to
clobber your system's config files with its preferred versions. You
should be able to figure out the name of that script from the time
resolv.conf got stamped on and comparing it with the system's crontab
entries. I can't recall the name of this script - something like
conf-install or something like that. I understand that the Linux version
which does this expects you to use some Linux-version-specific sysadmin
tool to update these files and not change them
directly. IIUC, the daily cron job copies its versions of the system
config files from some location where the system administration tool is
supposed to have written them.

        Kevin Darcy <kcd at daimlerchrysler.com>
It's probably DHCP that's doing that. Probably when your lease is being
renewed, it's "refreshing" your resolver configuration. I've never
configured DHCP on Linux so I don't know exactly how to turn off dynamic

resolver configuration.

Thanks to everyone for the replys.
This is what I did. I put in the DNS=no in the ifcfg-ppp0 file and
I also looked at the linuxconf under the DNS
server settings. There was a check to "synchronize DNS from basic host
information". I unchecked this and later I rebooted the server. It
worked. This morning when I came in and typed nslookup it was correct.

--
Ron Bramblett
Systems Administrator
The Fuller Brush Company