Hello all,

I have a dedicated RHE server here and I have having problems with my DNS, I think.

When I was at my office, sometime I would not be able to connect to my server. I could not access any of my websites and could not get e-mail. I called and someone suggested that the DNS at my ISP was not synced, so they had me enter my DNS IP into my windows "Obtain DNS from these Ip addresses" thing. Bang, it solved the problem.

Just to test, I did not change the DNS settings on one of the other PCs in my office and I noticed it would go out for a few days, then come back for a few days. But the PCs that had my server as the DNS had no problems with anything.

Well, I had no problem if it was just a temporary thing with my ISP, but I learned it wasn't.

Clients of mine, friends and family would call and say they couldn't access our sites or e-mail if they had it for differeing periods of time. And all these people were getting their connections from lots of different ISPS! I had them change their DNS settings on their local machine, just as I did and it worked!

I am getting this all the time with people and what I am truely concerned about is those people I don't know who can't access my sites or my clients.

Does anybody know what this could be? Is it the DNS on my server, is there a way to make sure it updates on other servers? Help! Please!

Thanks

Run your domain through http://www.dnsreport.com and see if it reports any errors.

This almost seems like a serial mismatch. Did you transfer you domain record to different authoritative servers?

eddy2099:

Thanks, this is what I get:

WARNING: All of your nameservers (listed at the parent nameservers) are in the same Class C (technically, /24) address space, which means that they are probably at the same physical location. Your nameservers should be at geographically dispersed locations. You should not have all of your nameservers at the same location. RFC2182 3.1 goes into more detail about secondary nameserver location.


WARNING: You only have 1 MX record. If your primary mail server is down or unreachable, there is a chance that mail may have troubles reaching you.


WARNING: One or more of your mailservers may be claiming to be a host other than what it really is (the SMTP greeting should be a 3-digit code, followed by a space or a dash, then the host name). This probably won't cause any harm, but may be a technical violation of RFC821 4.3 (and RFC2821 4.3.1).


WARN: One or more of your mailservers does not accept mail in the domain literal format (user@[0.0.0.0]). Mailservers are technically required RFC1123 5.2.17 to accept mail to domain literals for any of its IP addresses. Not accepting domain literals can make it more difficult to test your mailserver, and can prevent you from receiving E-mail from people reporting problems with your mailserver. However, it is unlikely that any problems will occur if the domain literals are not accepted.


WARN: Your domain does not have an SPF record. This means that spammers can easily send out E-mail that looks like it came from your domain, which can make your domain look bad (if the recipient thinks you really sent it), and can cost you money (when people complain to you, rather than the spammer). You may want to add an SPF record before October 1, 2004, the target date for domains to have SPF records in place.

I am not sure about too much of this, any ideas or suggestions.


bsykes: I am not 100% sure on what you are saying, but I may understand. I do not believe that I did. I was on shared hosting before and only setup having DNS servers at one registrar.

Well, what I was referring to, was that if the DNS servers that you were first hosted on had a serial of say 3, and the ones you are on now have your serial as 2, then DNS servers around the world will not update their zones, because they thing the one you are serving now hasn't been updated. You would need to change the serial to 4 to get this to propogate properly.

I do not have a master nameserver or cluster name server set, should and do you know what they should be? My server or another one?

What is the serial, how can I tell what I have and how do I change it.


Thank you very much for the help!!!

Master nameserver is where all other nameservers get their zone records. You update the master and the slaves all get the updates. Your slave nameservers can either be the same box or different boxs at SM or even different boxes around the world (only limited by time and budget) .

Serial is a number that shows what update your master is on, it's what the slaves check to make sure they are up to date and what master checks to make sure the slaves are up to date.

Your serial is in different places depending on the name server you are using. In Windows 2003 DNS, it's located by right clicking on the zone and clicking properties, it's under one of those tabs.

I am going to look into some of these things and see if I can get it figured out. It almost seems like it is getting worse, I am getting more people telling me they can't get my sites, but putting my server's IP in their DNS settings, fixes it.

Hopefully i can get it figured out. Worse thing is, its hard to test cause it is sporatic. Thanks!

Can you PM me the domain that you are having trouble with?

rabbit994:

So it sounds like my master should be my server, since that is where I would be updating any changes with new sites and things. Then it might be best to try and have SM as my slaves. Where do I setup slaves and do you know what SM's DNS servers are?

I have RHE and CPanel.

I'm having pretty much the same issue, my domain won't resolve properly at home(anymore it did at one point), dnsreport shows it pretty clean except for the normal stuff.

nslookup returns:

Got answer:
HEADER:
opcode = QUERY, id = 6, rcode = NXDOMAIN
header flags: response, want recursion, recursion avail.
questions = 1, answers = 0, authority records = 1, additional = 0

QUESTIONS:
*******.com.msn.com, type = A, class = IN
AUTHORITY RECORDS:
-> msn.com
ttl = 6710 (1 hour 51 mins 50 secs)
primary name server = dns.cp.msft.net
responsible mail addr = msnhst.microsoft.com
serial = 2004090201
refresh = 1800 (30 mins)
retry = 900 (15 mins)
expire = 2419200 (28 days)
default TTL = 900 (15 mins)

------------
------------
Got answer:
HEADER:
opcode = QUERY, id = 7, rcode = SERVFAIL
header flags: response, want recursion, recursion avail.
questions = 1, answers = 0, authority records = 0, additional = 0

QUESTIONS:
*****.com, type = A, class = IN

------------
*** UnKnown can't find lyihosting.com: Server failed

Whereas a good lookup looks like this --

Got answer:
HEADER:
opcode = QUERY, id = 8, rcode = NXDOMAIN
header flags: response, want recursion, recursion avail.
questions = 1, answers = 0, authority records = 1, additional = 0

QUESTIONS:
servermatrix.com.msn.com, type = A, class = IN
AUTHORITY RECORDS:
-> msn.com
ttl = 6697 (1 hour 51 mins 37 secs)
primary name server = dns.cp.msft.net
responsible mail addr = msnhst.microsoft.com
serial = 2004090201
refresh = 1800 (30 mins)
retry = 900 (15 mins)
expire = 2419200 (28 days)
default TTL = 900 (15 mins)

------------
------------
Got answer:
HEADER:
opcode = QUERY, id = 9, rcode = NOERROR
header flags: response, want recursion, recursion avail.
questions = 1, answers = 1, authority records = 2, additional = 2

QUESTIONS:
servermatrix.com, type = A, class = IN
ANSWERS:
-> servermatrix.com
internet address = 69.56.222.40
ttl = 3099 (51 mins 39 secs)
AUTHORITY RECORDS:
-> servermatrix.com
nameserver = ns2.theplanet.com
ttl = 29353 (8 hours 9 mins 13 secs)
-> servermatrix.com
nameserver = ns1.theplanet.com
ttl = 29353 (8 hours 9 mins 13 secs)
ADDITIONAL RECORDS:
-> ns1.theplanet.com
internet address = 216.234.234.30
ttl = 53818 (14 hours 56 mins 58 secs)
-> ns2.theplanet.com
internet address = 12.96.160.115
ttl = 43275 (12 hours 1 min 15 secs)

------------
Non-authoritative answer:
Name: servermatrix.com
Address: 69.56.222.40

and a bad domain (Just showing response) =

------------
*** UnKnown can't find lfdas.com: Non-existent domain


Not exactly sure where to go from here, even looking the domain at dnsstuff.com reports properly and everything.


Any help is greatly needed, and appreciated.

I love being stubborn sometimes, although I don't like what fixed it.

; Modified by Web Host Manager
; Zone File for *******.com
$TTL 14400
@ 14440 IN SOA ns1.******.com. ****.*****.com.
2004090206
14400
7200
3600000
86400
)


ns1 14400 IN A 67.***.***.**3 <--- These 2 lines were located near the bottom,
ns2 14400 IN A 67.***.***.**4 <--- ^^^^^^

*****.com. 14400 IN NS ns1.*******.com.
*****.com. 14400 IN NS ns2.*******.com.

******.com. 14400 IN A 67.***.***.**3

localhost.*****.com. 14400 IN A 127.0.0.1

*****.com. 14400 IN MX 0 *****.com.

mail 14400 IN CNAME ****.com.
www 14400 IN CNAME ****.com.
ftp 14400 IN A 67.***.***.**3
lyi 14400 IN A 67.***.***.**3

<---------- right here.

When I moved them to the top, it now automagically works.

But I REALLY dislike DNS being this fickle especially considering I had to manually edit it. This will be the only zone I have to manually edit like this correct?

I am assuming the error was caused by the order I set accounts up in.
Since I'm a newbie at dedicated hosting and Cpanel, I wasn't sure what the proper order was for proper account creation and how I should structure my accounts.

Mainly I ran through the setup process in whm, and it added 2 zones for ns1.*****.com and ns2.******.com then I created an account that acted with the domain of *****.com.
This placed the zone ahead of the ns zones and screwed it up I think, so I deleted the 2 ns zones and added A records for the nameservers in the *****.com zone, they didn't work because they were appended at the bottom, so out of desperation I moved them to the very top, and now it works.

Just figured i'd post what and how I screwed up in case it helps.


BTW if anyone has a good HOW-TO on proper domain setup order(ie, How to set up main domain then setup virtual hosts) please let me know as I don't feel too comfortable Jimmy rigging it, and still have time to start over if need be .

How did you know which DNS zone to edit?

I don't even have entries like

ns1 14400 IN A 67.***.***.**3 <--- These 2 lines were located near the bottom,
ns2 14400 IN A 67.***.***.**4 <--- ^^^^^^

in any of my domains.