nslookup problems with two NIC's under NT4

[Danny Mayer]

At 11:22 AM 9/30/01, Justinien wrote:
>Hello everybody,
>
>I send you this message because I used to configure some DNS files
>under Solaris 8 but this time I done it for a friend and he uses Nt4
>Server/Sp6a with Bind 8.2.4. The real problems we got are with
>nslookup but before, I give you the complete network configuration of
>the server. I just replaced the site reference with mysite.
>
>Platform : nt4 Server / Sp6a
>NIC's    : 3Com Etherlink Xl Adapter / Half Duplex / 10 Mbps
>              --> DHCP ( connected to ISP )
>              --> All TCP Ports closed except 53 ( DNS )
>              --> Protocols : TCP/IP

Why half-duplex?

>            Realtek RTL8029(AS) / Full Duplex / 10 Mbps
>              --> IP 192.168.1.1 ( LAN )
>              --> All ports opened
>              --> Protocols : NetBUI && TCP/IP
>
>   --> Ip forwarding enabled
>   --> TCP/IP Settings : HostName                 : ns1
>                         Domain                   : dev.mysite
>                         DNS Service Search Order : 192.168.1.1
>
>---------------------------------------------------------------
>named.conf
>---------------------------------------------------------------
>     options {
>         //
>         //boot file for the root server
>         //
>         directory       "G:\BIND\ETC";
>     
>     };
>     

Does he really have a local G drive?  Or is this a network drive.  If it's a
network drive he needs to specify a UNC style drive name otherwise the
system service won't find the directory.
So now, the problems are the followings : 
>1 - when we load nslookup, we get the following message :
> >>
>     *** Can't find server name for address 192.168.1.1: No response
>from server
>     *** Default servers are not available

You provided forward zones but no reverse zone for the 192.168.1.x domain.
You need to add that to your configuration.  nslookup is stupid and tries
to get the address of the server it's using to perform lookups.  It's a
fatal error for nslookup if it can't find it.

><<
>2 - when we ping :
>mysite.dyndns.org           : we get the dhcp IP ( ok )
>(but) www.mysite.dyndns.org : we get the LAN address. ( is it ok ??? )

Right.  ping does try and to reverse lookups for the address.

>I think Nt4 is confused with two NIC's and take the address of one NIC
>for the other. For our DNS, it seems the configuration files are ok (
>no error in event viewer and service started succesfully ) but how can
>I specify a default namserver in Nt4 and is this the same when the
>computer is the DNS itself (client and server) ???

No, it's you who is confused since the configuration is incomplete and you
are using a very poor tool to debug this.

You can define the 127.0.0.1 (localhost) address on the machine that's running
BIND (using the Networks control panel - TCP/IP protocol) and all local
applications will use that address.

If you look in the application event log, you will find that it is listening on all
known interfaces, even though it's not very useful to have a nameserver listening
on an IP address which could change any moment.  A DNS server needs to
listen on fixed addresses to be useful to other clients.

         Danny