frustrating lookup problem

[Ronan Flood]

Chris Sherman <csherman at allegheny.edu> wrote:

> I'm having trouble looking up a site(provider) from my master server, 
> but not from my slave, so, of course, people using the master cannot 
> browse and send mail to some sites hosted by vianetworks.net.  Setting 

Does it work for other visnetworks sites?

> the query type to any on the master - the info shows up fine, but still 
> no A records(session below).
> 
> I'm having trouble with the following:
> 
> creativeimprintsystems.com 66.155.17.134
> tower23.com 	66.155.55.3
> sipco.com 	66.155.40.24
> 
> master is running 8.1.2 on tru64 v5.0(I'm trying to get this fixed 
> before I upgrade bind)

Upgrading BIND might sort it out, unless you have routing/firewall
problems between you and the remote nameservers.


> in my master's cache:
> tower23 155405  IN      NS      ns1.imconline.net.      ;Cr=addtnl
> 
> 
> #nslookup
> Default Server:  localhost
> Address:  127.0.0.1
> 
>  > server pellns
> Default Server:  pellns.allegheny.edu
> Address:  141.195.5.200
> 
>  > tower23.com
> Server:  pellns.allegheny.edu
> Address:  141.195.5.200
> 
> *** pellns.allegheny.edu can't find tower23.com: Non-existent host/domain
>  > set type=any
>  > tower23.com
> Server:  pellns.allegheny.edu
> Address:  141.195.5.200
> 
> Non-authoritative answer:
> tower23.com     nameserver = ns1.imconline.net
> tower23.com     nameserver = ns2.imconline.net
> 
> Authoritative answers can be found from:
> tower23.com     nameserver = ns1.imconline.net
> tower23.com     nameserver = ns2.imconline.net
> ns1.imconline.net       internet address = 66.155.0.139
> ns2.imconline.net       internet address = 66.155.0.27

Can you query those nameservers from nslookup?
Can you log on to pellns and query those nameservers from nslookup?
If not, can you ping/traceroute to them from pellns?

Same questions for the nameservers for sipco.com and the other domain.

If there's an underlying network problem, sort that out first.

As for working round it, the best thing would be to set up forward
zones for the problem domains to your other server, but I don't think
BIND 8.1.2 supports them.  You could set up master zones on pellns
tself for them, with the required entries copied from the true master,
if you know what you need, eg for tower23.com

tower23.com.             IN      A       66.155.55.3
tower23.com.             IN      MX      10 mailserver1.tower23.com.
mailserver1.tower23.com. IN      A       66.155.127.54

etc, but that is a bit dodgy.

Another approach would be for pellns to forward all queries to your
secondary, though that isn't a great idea either.

-- 
                      Ronan Flood <R.Flood at noc.ulcc.ac.uk>
                        working for but not speaking for
             Network Services, University of London Computer Centre
     (which means: don't bother ULCC if I've said something you don't like)