DNS resolution not working as expected.

[ShotgunMo]

First off... linux newb...

fed up with Microsoft and w10, so trying out Mint.

I have my own windows AD with DNS that I use along with many VPNs to connect to customers. The windows dns server has conditional forwards that allow me to access my customers' hosts by name. (ex: server1.customer1.local, server1.customer4.local, etc..)

my AD server is on my local LAN.. 192.168.11.98, So all my windows PCs are configured with 192.168.11.98 as their only DNS server and everything is jiving just fine. ON the Mint PC, I set the DNS to 192.168.11.98 but not so kosher.

i followed this: http://askubuntu.com/questions/627899/n ... nt-go-away
to disable dnsmasq. The mint PC is set up with DHCP, and getting 192.168.11.98 as its one and only DNS server, but it still will not resolve those hosts that should be resolved from those conditional forwarding domains.

in a terminal window if I "ping server1.customer1.local" i get "ping: unknown host server1.customer1.local"

If i run nslookup, then try resolve server1.customer1.local it takes a few moments, eventually times out, and i get ";;connection timed out; no servers could be reached"
If i then issue "server 192.168.11.98", then enter server1.customer1.local it resolves correctly. But once i exit nslookup, it fails again.

if i run "nm-tool" it lists 192.168.11.98 as my only DNS server.

HELP!

[rene]

It is due to your use of the .local suffix which is really sort of reserved for zeroconf networking (mDNS, on Linux in the form of Avahi). If you look at your /etc/nsswitch.conf -- a configuration file for the system-library resolver -- you will see a line much like

Code: Select all

hosts: files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] wins dns

The "files" entry has the system resolver first of all try the /etc/hosts resolver. When it returns indicating anything other than success, continue on with the "mdns4_minimal" resolver. By the explicit interjection of [NOTFOUND=return] when it returns indicating the lookup succeeded yet the requested host was not found, stop looking.

The "mdns4_minimal" definition of the lookup succeeding is exactly the name ending in ".local" and mDNS is set authoritative for the .local domain precisely through this mechanism. As really it should be, but it in your case means that DNS is never queried for your hosts. The best solution is not using .local names for anything but mDNS; another one is deleting the [NOTFOUND=return] action or all of mDNS resolving outright.