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Date:      Thu, 25 Nov 2004 18:08:52 +0100
From:      Nicolas <lists@serpe.org>
To:        david.jenkins@gmail.com
Cc:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: nslookup not working on client machines only
Message-ID:  <41A611A4.5030206@serpe.org>
In-Reply-To: <1185.10.0.0.2.1101294896.squirrel@10.0.0.2>
References:  <41A3DA32.6000005@serpe.org> <1185.10.0.0.2.1101294896.squirrel@10.0.0.2>

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David Jenkins wrote:
> On Wed, 24 November, 2004 0:47, Nicolas said:
> 
>>Hello,
>>
>>I've set up a FreeBSD box to provide my home network a NAT access to
>>the
>>Internet and a DNS caching-only server with bind 8.3.7 (among other
>>things).
>>
>>It's working perfectly but today I noticed something that I do not
>>understand. When trying to $ nslookup google.com on a client host,
>>here's what it says :
>>
>>8<--
>>nicolas@fsol$ nslookup google.com
>>*** Can't find server name for address 192.168.0.1: Non-existent
>>host/domain
>>*** Can't find server name for address ::: No response from server
>>*** Default servers are not available
>>nicolas@fsol$
>>-->8
>>
>>Now, trying the same thing directly on the DNS box :
>>
>>8<--
>>root@earth$ nslookup google.com
>>Server:         192.168.0.1
>>Address:        192.168.0.1#53
>>
>>Non-authoritative answer:
>>Name:   google.com
>>Address: 216.239.57.99
>>Name:   google.com
>>Address: 216.239.37.99
>>Name:   google.com
>>Address: 216.239.39.99
>>
>>root@earth$
>>-->8
>>
>>The resolv.conf files are the same on the 2 boxes :
>>
>>8<--
>>nicolas@fsol$ cat /etc/resolv.conf
>>search serpe.org
>>nameserver 192.168.0.1
>>nicolas@fsol$
>>
>>root@earth$ cat /etc/resolv.conf
>>search serpe.org
>>nameserver 192.168.0.1
>>root@earth$
>>-->8
>>
>>Given this, I do not understand why it works on the DNS box and not on
>>the client.
> 
> 
> 
> I believe this might mean you don't have reverse DNS setup on your
> server for you local network.
> 
> i.e. when you use nslookup it tries finding out the corresponding
> hostname for it's own IP address. So if you have an IP address of
> 192.168.0.100 on the box that is having trouble with nslookup, you
> will need to define what hostname that IP address map's to on your DNS
> server.
> 
> You need to have the following in named.conf and the corresponding
> zone file
> 
> zone "0.168.192.in-addr.arpa" {
>         type master;
>         file "localnetwork.rev";
> };
> 
> which defines your home network and their IP address etc ...
> 
> Hope this helps.
> 
> David
> 
> PS - dig doesn't suffer from those problems AFAIK, so you may be
> better of using dig.

Thank you for your reply.

I understand that adding a reverse dns zone may solve this problem, but 
I don't understand why nslookup doesn't output the error when used on 
the dns box itself.
It's the same process that is used, it should be the same error ?

What am I missing here ?



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