What causes 'Can't find server name for address' error?

[Joseph S D Yao]

On Fri, May 04, 2001 at 07:04:35PM +0000, lynton wrote:
> I got a server and am trying to setup BIND (8.2.3) but get the
> following error when doing nslookup. I read thru the mailing list
> archives and found something may be wrong with the reverse lookup
> file, but I can't see anything wrong with it (or the other files). The
> files are given below.
> Please help if possible.
> 
> *** Can't find server name for address 111.222.333.444: No information
> *** Default servers are not available
> 
> I made these files for mydomain.com and IP 111.222.333.444 (actual
> domain name and IP substituted later)
> db.cache is the root cache data available at
> ftp://ftp.rs.internic.net/ but not displayed down here

You don't have a heck of a lot of real information in these files!  It
looks like you have a network of exactly one host, eh?

...
> mydomain.com.hosts__________________________________________________________________
> 
> $ttl 38400
> mydomain.com.      IN      SOA     mydomain.com. dns.mydomain.com. (
>                         988864461
>                         10800
>                         3600
>                         432000
>                         38400 )
> mydomain.com.      IN      NS      mydomain.com.

You NEED a line saying:
mydomain.com.		IN  A	111.222.333.444

You might want to adopt the conventional standard for serial numbers,
of YYYYMMDDNN, e.g., 2001050401, where NN varies only if you do more
changes than one in a day.

But this is not the problem about which you are asking.

> 111.222.333.444.rev__________________________________________________________________
> 
> $ttl 38400
> 444.333.222.111.in-addr.arpa.     IN      SOA     mydomain.com.
> dns.mydomain.com. (
>                         988864515
>                         10800
>                         3600
>                         432000
>                         38400 )
> 444.333.222.111.in-addr.arpa.     IN      NS      mydomain.com.

You SHOULD HAVE a line
444.333.222.111.in-addr.arpa.	IN  PTR		mydomain.com.

This is ONLY so that you don't run into the bug in 'nslookup' that
you're running into, where a lack of a correct configured PTR record in
the server causes it to assume that the whole server is not there.

Same comment about SOA.

You should also understand that this PTR record will never be seen in
the public Internet, unless your ISP delegates authority for it to you
using RFC 2317, q.v.  In which case you'd have to change it anyway.

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