From owner-freebsd-questions Tue Dec 14 18:51:13 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from w2xo.pgh.pa.us (ipl-229-010.npt-sdsl.stargate.net [208.223.229.10]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A47D01502D for ; Tue, 14 Dec 1999 18:51:10 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from durham@w2xo.pgh.pa.us) Received: from w2xo.pgh.pa.us (shazam.internal [192.168.5.3]) by w2xo.pgh.pa.us (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id CAA05837 for ; Wed, 15 Dec 1999 02:51:08 GMT Message-ID: <3857021C.B04F8657@w2xo.pgh.pa.us> Date: Tue, 14 Dec 1999 21:51:08 -0500 From: Jim Durham Organization: dis- X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [en] (X11; U; FreeBSD 3.2-RELEASE i386) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: FreeBSD Questions Subject: A Nameserver/Resolv.conf question Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG I would like to understand better some behavior I saw with 3.3-RELEASE concerning resolv.conf. I am in the process of bringing our company's LAN onto the internet. As a first step, we are running mail on a 3.3-RELEASE box using fetchmail to fetch the mail for our domain off a server on the 'net via modem. In order to get all the workstations configured as I would like them when the system is fully completed, I run a local nameserver on the 3.3 box as a master for our domain. This server is not reachable yet from the internet, so it should not interfere with our domain nameserers located on the 'net. The 3.3 box is also not known to the internet nameservers for our domain, only the server which stores our domain mail off-site is known at present. My first attempt, prior to discovering that 3.3-RELEASE no longer needs resolv.conf if you are running a local nameserver, was to make a resolv.conf file with the local nameserver entry first, and then two nameserver IPs provided by our ISP on the two next lines. This allowed the "local" nameserver to be consulted first, resolving problems with names not know to the "real" domain server (which knows only the off-site server's IP). Every day, upon firing up my workstation, I would find problems with TELNETing into the local server. I guessed that this was a nameserver problem. Upon looking at resolv.conf, I found that the IP of the local nameserver, the whole line, had been removed. The time of modification of the file was at the time the "periodic/daily" script ran. I could find no mention in the "daily" scripts of resolv.conf. The "daily" scripts daily e-mail message to "root" showed no errors. I fixed the problem by just eliminating resolv.conf and defaulting to the local nameserver, but what was modifying the resolv.conf file? Thanks, -- Jim Durham To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message