How to make my webserver name accessible

**var777** · 10-29-2009, 11:05 PM

I checked the authoritative DNS server's resolv.conf, it has the IP of the DNS server and the ISP's IP as a secondary server for back up. I remove the ISP's IP now the DNS server cannot access the internet. But it doesn't make sense as the website that it is hosting right now, is working fine.

I tried the dig, host and nslookup. The only problem is the nslookup for the domain that uses our nameserver. It gives this result:

~# nslookup www.somebodysdomainname.com
; Got recursion not available from xx.xxxx.xx (ip of the DNS authoritative server), trying next server
; Got recursion not available from xx.xxxx.xx (ip of the DNS authoritative server), trying next server
Server: IP of the slave DNS server (my slave server)
Address: ip #53

** server can't find www.somebodysdomainname.com: SERVFAIL

Well, I don't know how to fix this. I check the resolv.conf, it has the IPs of my DNS servers and now I cannot connect the internet. But the website I am hosting can be accessed fine.

Can you further help me with this please?

Thank you so much.

**peter** · 10-29-2009, 11:22 PM

I think you are mixing up caching DNS and authoritative. Unless you configure your authoritative DNS server as a caching DNS server pointing the DNS server's resolv.conf to itself won't work.

Leave resolv.conf at the ISP servers. They will then poll the DNS server for it's authoritative information on the domain.

You could point resolv.conf to your DNS server (localhost) but until you configure it to do caching, it won't work the way you expect.

**var777** · 10-30-2009, 01:28 AM

Okay, so what is the correct way of configuring a caching DNS server? When I configured my DNS servers, I just used the handy BIND GUI and does little editing on /etc/named.conf. Manually, I don't know how to write the correct syntax. Also I thought my server is an Authoritative DNS Server? I am not familiar with caching DNS server.

So my additional question to the problem is: Where in the Fedora system should I configure caching DNS correctly? Can I use BIND GUI to do this?

I entered the ISP's ip as a tertiary DNS and now I can connect to the internet. So I can see that you were right to say that both of my DNS servers are not working at all as primary and secondary DNS.

Using BIND GUI in my DNS server, I pointed my webserver's static ip to it's hostname. So now I can access the hostname outside the LAN. But I did this as a more of a trial and error attempt. Like you said, there's something that I misconfigured somewhere that I am not seeing.

I would further appreciate your assistance on this please.

Thanks Peter.

**var777** · 11-01-2009, 11:27 PM

I surf the internet and the owner of this webiste:
http://corpocrat.com/2009/10/01/trou...ration-errors/

gives a very good 'CLEAR CUT' advice. The guy gives a very simple guide on setting up DNS servers and other problems. I had a problem accessing my phpmyadmin and his advice was great!!!

Guys check him out!