DNS Problems

Not sure if I set this up right

[chewbacca810]

I have never worked with dns at an internet level (the only experience I have is running bind on my local lan to make addressing the boxes easier). Anyways, I am running a linux server, using bind. Bind is runing and the zones are setup correct. My registrar, directnic, allowed me to specify my own custom nameservers and I set those up a day ago. Whois on my site brings back the right ns's.

DNS lookup retrieves my domain.

But DNS reverse fails, is this wrong? From what I am gathering, my host needs to point dns to me?

Also, when i try bringing up the domain in a browser, it hangs at resolving. Do I have to wait for my changes, on my own dns server, to propigate? Or is that only when changing the parent dns with a registrar?

I don't know, like I said, I am new to all of this. I *might* have my reverse zone setup wrong, but I went through about 10 sites reading how to setup it up. Any info would be very helpful.

Thanks
anthony

<Sorry, no personal domains.
See Terms of Service [webmasterworld.com]>

[edited by: tedster at 7:22 pm (utc) on Feb. 28, 2005]

[mcavic]

Generally, your host has to configure the reverse DNS for you, and serve it from their DNS servers. That's if you only have a few IP addresses, and they own the rest of the block.

Your browser could be hanging on old data that hasn't propagated yet. To check, get the IP address of your primary DNS server (the one your workstation is set to) and assuming it's 10.10.10.10, then from linux, do:

nslookup -type=ns mydomain.com 10.10.10.10

If it reports the old name servers, but the whois is correct, then you probably just need to wait.

If it reports no name servers, then there may be a problem.

[chewbacca810]

ahhaha, what if it reports the right name servers? lol

I prolly should have read the TOS on these forums, didn't relize they'd clip most of my first post . When I do a reverse lookup, it fails, after probing my host, with the error:

X.X.X.X PTR record: X.X.X.X.in-arpa.com. [TTL 60s] [A=None] *ERROR* A record does not point back to original IP.

of course the X's are my ip address, but I'll get clipped again if I mention them. what bothers me is that in-arpa.com, isn't that supposed to be in-addr.arpa? Also, another thing bugging me, is that even if the reverse lookup wasn't working, shouldn't it still resolve? My registrar has the IP of my machine, so when someone asks for my site, it gets my dns servers off the parent servers, queries my dns server and gets the www record, and then opens a connection to my server, correct? I just don't understand where the connection is going wrong. Anyone understand what is going on here?

[chewbacca810]

Okay, i think i figured it out. I setup iptables to block almost all traffic, except for port 80 (tcp udp), 53 (tcp udp), pop, stmp. I didn't allow pinging, etc. I don't know if that's what caused it to not resolve, but I flushed my tables and within a few seconds I was on my server.

My next question, i thought all you needed for dns was udp and tcp on port 53, is there any other traffic that needs to be enabled?

[mcavic]

Port 53 tcp and udp should be all you need for DNS.

isn't that supposed to be in-addr.arpa

Yep. Also, you're right that reverse DNS problems shouldn't affect forward DNS. But, if you get a timeout when you query your reverse DNS, that can cause delays if you're making outgoing connections from the IP that doesn't reverse-resolve.

[chewbacca810]

That's what I thought. I got in touch with my host and he said that they own the in-arpa.com domain. I did a whois and sure enough they do own it.

As for the dns, after flushing my iptables, I added a section to accept icmp echos, started up iptables, and now it's running perfectly. I am assuming that the pinging is need by client browsers and such to resolve.