Forwarders Won't Forward

[Mark.Andrews at nominum.com]

	Forward != delegation.

	Mark

> I am using BIND 8.2.2p5.  This server maintains the master zone information
> for the local subnet (10.0.0.0 in this example).  A user on this network has
> setup a VMWare installation containing 30 or 40 different configurations of
> various operating systems.  As the system admin for this network, I do not
> wish to maintain the IP addresses for these "disposable" VMWare systems.  As
> such, this user has setup their own local DNS server (10.0.0.5 in this
> example).
> 
> What I want to do is forward nslookup requests from the "central" DNS server
> to this user's DNS if the name cannot be resolved on the "central" server.
> 
> This is the global options section in /etc/named.conf (10.0.0.5 is the IP
> address of the VMWare "DNS"):
> 
> options {
>         directory "/var/named";
> 
>         forward first;
>         forwarders {
>                 10.0.0.5;
>         };
> };
> 
> However, BIND makes no attempt to forward queries to 10.0.0.5 and I have no
> idea why.  For instance:
> 
> (assume, for this example, the VMWare boxes are 10.0.0.101-10.0.0.254):

> $ nslookup 10.0.0.101
> Server: localhost
> Address: 127.0.0.1
> 
> *** localhost can't find 10.0.0.101: Non-existent host/domain
> 
> ...but this works
> 
> $ nslookup 10.0.0.101 10.0.0.5
> Server: somedns.foo.com
> Address: 10.0.0.5
> 
> Name: somevmwarebox.foo.com
> Address: 10.0.0.101
> 
> ...At home, I am using DNS forwarding to forward DNS requests from my linux
> box to my ISP's DNS server - and it all works without a hitch, but on the
> network in this example, BIND doesn't seem to be allowing me to forward
> queries to another server on the subnet.
> 
> Help?
> 
> Jason
> 
> 
> 
> 
--
Mark Andrews, Nominum Inc.
1 Seymour St., Dundas Valley, NSW 2117, Australia
PHONE: +61 2 9871 4742                 INTERNET: Mark.Andrews at nominum.com