Wits end

Kevin Darcy kcd at chrysler.com
Fri Apr 18 19:34:56 UTC 2008


I re-read all of your earlier messages before posting mine, and my 
assessment stands. You presented the project primarily as "getting a 
nameserver up and running" in the beginning, and only recently switched 
to "help, my DNS resolution is broken".

As for being demeaning or rude, I usually avoid that in this forum, as 
most regular participants will attest. But I don't take kindly to being 
accused of "blowing off" a critical technical detail. It wasn't 
addressed because a) given your earlier presentation it didn't seem 
relevant, and b) even when you started to describe the details of your 
problem, you "anonymized" the resolv.conf specifics in such a way that 
made it difficult or impossible to troubleshoot.

Another key concept here is "known working state". If someone mucked 
around with your config files and wasn't able to solve your problem, at 
least you should have had them roll back their changes to a "known 
working state". My guess is that /etc/resolv.conf *was* working at some 
point, but in their unsuccessful attempts to get your nameserver (or 
possibly your webserver) working, they broke it. They should have backed 
out that change as soon as resolution stopped working. "Known working 
state" is a fundamental change-management principle. That would at least 
have afforded you a *chance* to make forward progress instead of piling 
on multiple levels of problems/misconfigurations. In extreme cases an OS 
re-install might be called for.

- Kevin

Bob Hoffman wrote:
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: bind-users-bounce at isc.org 
>> [mailto:bind-users-bounce at isc.org] On Behalf Of Kevin Darcy
>> Sent: Friday, April 18, 2008 2:29 PM
>> To: bind-users at isc.org
>> Subject: Re: Wits end
>>
>> Bob,
>> We didn't "blow off" /etc/resolv.conf. Your earlier posts 
>> were along the lines of "I'm trying to learn how to set up a 
>> nameserver and to document the process". /etc/resolv.conf 
>> *doesn't*affect* the operation of a nameserver, only the name 
>> resolution of the local host, so it seemed irrelevant to what 
>> you were trying to accomplish.
>>     
>
> My earlier post were along the lines of 'is this list of things what is
> needed for resolution of my websites and using mail on a server. The list
> was very explicit with notes. No one said anything about resolv other than I
> misspelled it in the letter. 
> In the texts it was obvious I am new and seeking a helping hand by anyone
> who wanted to help. I got a lot of letters berating me instead, though a few
> tried to help.
>
> I stated that I wanted to put websites on it and that they in turn need to
> send emails. Which does require resolv work correctly (I did not know that I
> think looking back it was pretty obvious.) I did not demand answers, I just
> asked. I did not appreciate being talked down to by many, and my grief is
> directed at them.
>
>
>   
>> It wasn't until the "Wit's End" post at approximately 5pm 
>> yesterday, that it became clear you even had a specific 
>> *problem*. And, even then, you "anonymized" the contents of 
>> /etc/resolv.conf by saying you had "nameserver xx.xx.xx.xx" 
>> in the file. How are we supposed to diagnose "xx.xx.xx.xx"? 
>> Perhaps we should start giving "anonymized" solutions to 
>> "anonymized" problem descriptions, e.g. "change xxx in your 
>> named.conf to yyy" and have the posters *guess* at what we're 
>> talking about. Would that work better?
>>     
>
> As in my earlier, it was listed over and over that no websites are on it and
> nothing had been set up. I kept talking about the nslookupnot working and
> that is as far as I got. I think my letters were very detailed. I think some
> people see what they want and disregard the rest. But there help is always
> appreciated. But being yelled at is just rude, especially when you are just
> asking for help.
>
>
>
>   
>> Maybe your next documentation project should be "how to 
>> maximize the effectiveness of getting information from 
>> technical mailing lists". More people need to learn how to do that.
>>     
>
> Or "how to deal with over bearing jerks who do not help but just attack your
> letters, spelling, grammar, and instead of ignoring something they do not
> understand they berate you instead".  
>
> And.... After hiring people who did not or could not do the job you get a
> bit put off. \
>
> I suggest reading books for you. One would be "how to read a plea for help
> from a new person not expecting them to know how to put it in words
> properly" or "how to bypass a situation where you can make some feel like
> poop because you know more than they do and can mess with them instead of
> helping?"
>
>
>   
>> In any case, populating /etc/resolv.conf is part of 
>> *Operating*System* configuration, not nameserver 
>> configuration _per_se_. A precondition for having a 
>> properly-functioning webserver or nameserver or mail server, 
>> or anything that provides a service over the network to 
>> clients, is to have a properly-configured *server*, OS-wise, 
>> including networking capability, so /etc/resolv.conf should 
>> have already been taken care of, long before you installed 
>> BIND or Apache or whatever. How did that step get botched in 
>> whatever process you were following?
>>
>>     
>
>
> Resov was actually changed by me if you read the mails. Thinking I was doing
> it right. Explicityly listed. And since you appear new at reading a full
> letter before attacking someone with lame insulting demenaor, you may want
> to reread the letters over the last month or so..the ones that mention
> 'centos' (which installs, you would be surprised, all sorts of programs in
> the beginning like apache and all that)
> Also, you would realize that other than the basic install, DNSbind was the
> first thing I was tackling.
>
> If you bothered to read the letters before writing about your superiority
> and eveyrone else's stupidity, you would have read lines like 'I paid people
> to set it up for me and they failed'.  So, oh great guru of the internet, as
> wise as you are, you might not have realized that they changed some files.
> Also, I may have tried to fix those files or alter them back to where I
> thought they would be. But reading and understanding is not your forte, you
> would rather dump on me on the internet over and over again.
>
> Well.....guess you are always right. And your letters were always completely
> right (of course they had nothing to do with the questions, but they were
> right.)
>
> You keep on trucking. You are doing a great job, and a compassionate one
> too.
>
> Oh, I sent this to the group too, since you seem to want to keep that up.
>
>
>
>
>   



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