[PLUG] DNS weirdness

[Jeff Abrahamson <jeff@purple.com>]

I was getting DNS errors yesteray from exim but not from ping,
mozilla, etc.

My /etc/resolv.conf file looks like this (with the two commented lines
uncommented):

    search purple.com
    domain purple.com
    #nameserver 204.183.80.2
    #nameserver 204.183.80.3
    nameserver 192.168.0.6
    nameserver 192.168.0.5
    nameserver 192.168.0.254

The two commented lines are my ISP's DNS servers.

With the two lines commented, exim -qff sent me errors like this:

  Message 1DKSQ8-0007rI-00 has been frozen.
  The sender is <jeff@purple.com>.

  The following address(es) have yet to be delivered:
    xxx@cs.drexel.edu: lookup of host "mail.purple.com" failed in smarthost router~

With the two lines commented out, all works fine but perhaps a bit slower.

I have /etc/hosts set up a bit excessively:

    127.0.0.1	localhost
    192.168.0.6	asterix.purple.com asterix
    192.168.0.5	diderot.purple.com diderot mail.purple.com
    192.168.0.254	gw.purple.com gw
    192.168.0.253	lothlorian.purple.com lothlorian

    # The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts
    # (added automatically by netbase upgrade)

    ::1     ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
    fe00::0 ip6-localnet
    ff00::0 ip6-mcastprefix
    ff02::1 ip6-allnodes
    ff02::2 ip6-allrouters
    ff02::3 ip6-allhosts

And each of the 192.168 machines has a copy of the 192.168 DNS
authority file.

What I want to happen on my workstation is for lookups to proceed as
follows:

    - If 192.168.0.6 has authority, it should answer.
    - If it doesn't, it should ask the hosts listed in resolv.conf
    - If that doesn't work (but something does), it's ok to query root
      servers

Any idea how to fix this?

BTW, regardless of resolv.conf comments above, dig tells me that it
can't resolve "asterix" but it can resolve "asterix.purple.com" (an
internal-only name, note, it should fail for you).  Any idea why?

The 192.168 network is behind a NAT box.

-- 
 Jeff

 Jeff Abrahamson  <http://www.purple.com/jeff/>    +1 215/837-2287
 GPG fingerprint: 1A1A BA95 D082 A558 A276  63C6 16BF 8C4C 0D1D AE4B

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