Not able to resolve external names

[Barry Margolin]

In article <9s9muf$r83 at pub3.rc.vix.com>,
John Ross  <john.ross at informix.com> wrote:
>How does bind 4.9.7 go about contacting .com, .net, etc?  What I mean is,
>when you try to resolve something outside of your local domain, what process
>happens (or in this case is not happening).  I am assuming that it tries to
>contact one of the root name servers, but which one?  Is it random, or do
>you know with some certainty which one it goes to?

It goes to the one that has had the best response time in the past.

>This is really weird.  In nslookup if you do a "server
>some-root-name-server" then it can resolve stuff, but if it points at
>itself, the queries just timeout.

When BIND 4 performs recursive queries, the source port is 53; when dig or
nslookup performs a query, the source port is an ephemeral port.  Do you
have a firewall or packet filter blocking *inbound* port 53?  That would
prevent the replies from getting back to you.

-- 
Barry Margolin, barmar at genuity.net
Genuity, Woburn, MA
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