From owner-freebsd-questions  Thu Aug  7 17:14:57 1997
Return-Path: <owner-freebsd-questions>
Received: (from root@localhost)
          by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id RAA09109
          for questions-outgoing; Thu, 7 Aug 1997 17:14:57 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from nico.telstra.net (nico.telstra.net [139.130.204.16])
          by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id RAA09099
          for <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG>; Thu, 7 Aug 1997 17:14:53 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from freebie.lemis.com (gregl1.lnk.telstra.net [139.130.136.133]) by nico.telstra.net (8.6.10/8.6.10) with ESMTP id KAA08304; Fri, 8 Aug 1997 10:14:20 +1000
From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>
Received: (grog@localhost) by freebie.lemis.com (8.8.7/8.6.12) 
       id JAA16082; Fri, 8 Aug 1997 09:44:19 +0930 (CST)
Message-Id: <199708080014.JAA16082@freebie.lemis.com>
Subject: Re: DNS
In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19970807113414.0080e100@samara.co.zw> from David Kelly at "Aug 7, 97 11:34:14 am"
To: david@samara.co.zw (David Kelly)
Date: Fri, 8 Aug 1997 09:44:19 +0930 (CST)
Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Organisation:   LEMIS, PO Box 460, Echunga SA 5153, Australia
Phone:          +61-8-8388-8250
Fax:            +61-8-8388-8250
Mobile:         +61-41-739-7062
WWW-Home-Page:  http://www.lemis.com/~grog
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL32 (25)]
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
X-Loop: FreeBSD.org
Precedence: bulk

David Kelly writes:
> Hi,
>
> We're an ISP using FreeBSD 2.1.7.1 on our servers. We have a problem with
> our DNS. Our domain is SAMARA.CO.ZW When doing an nslookup for anything
> within that domain (e.g. mail.samara.co.zw) it appears that the lookup is
> done outside our network. If we disconnect our link to our upstream
> provider, we can't look up anything inside our network.
>
> If I do:
>
> nslookup mail
>
> or ..
>
> nslookup mail.samara.co.zw. (note the trailing dot)
>
> then the lookup is instant but
>
> nslookup mail.samara.co.zw
>
> times out.
>
>
> Any ideas on the source of the problem? The /etc/resolv.conf file contains:
>
> domain          samara.co.zw
> nameserver      196.2.64.1		<- samara.co.zw = 196.2.64.1
> nameserver      147.28.0.34
> nameserver      204.59.144.222
> nameserver      204.117.214.10

This is a funny-looking resolv.conf.  You're running a local name
server, but three of the addresses appear to be pointing to different
continents.  It shouldn't cause timeouts, but it won't cause blinding
speed either.

Where is this file?  You shouldn't have it on any system which runs a
name server.  If this is really *on* samara.co.zw, remove or rename
it, and try again.  If it still doesn't work, let's see your
/etc/named.boot file.

Greg