Hi,
The installation of Skolelinux leaves the system in a state where the local DNS server is set up for only internal name resolution. While I can ping the internet it will not resolve an external URL.

The documentation says that external access needs to be configured in the DNS server but I could not find how. I am not familiar with the setup in Skole.

Thank you for your help
Ernst

Could you clarify - do you have a DNS server on your network or do you plan to use the system in question as a DNS server?

How is your machine assigned an IP address? Is it via DHCP or a static entry?

When it is via DHCP, the DHCP server usually tells the machine what DNS to use. Otherwise, you need to add DNS machines to /etc/resolv.conf, for example, lines like:

nameserver 203.12.160.35
nameserver 203.12.160.36

If you do have DHCP but your /etc/resolv.conf file is not being automatically updated, you will have to type in entries as above.

The machine has a statically assigned IP address of 10.0.2.2

Contents of resolv.conf is:
# Dynamic resolv.conf(5) file for glibc resolver(3) generated by resolvconf(8)
# DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE BY HAND -- YOUR CHANGES WILL BE OVERWRITTEN
nameserver 127.0.0.1
search intern

named is running so it seems that DNS request should be resolved by named on localhost
and named should be told to forward request to external DNS if it cannot resolve locally.
I do not know how to do that.

Just noticed that the webbrowser is configured to go through squid proxy server port 3128.

This may not have any effect on resolver?

[QUOTE=ernst;3258574]Hi,
The installation of Skolelinux leaves the system in a state where the local DNS server is set up for only internal name resolution. While I can ping the internet it will not resolve an external URL.
[QUOTE]

I assume that by DNS server (there is a choice) that you mean Bind. Bind is one of the more difficult things for a first-timer to set up as it is very versatile and allows many different configurations and the exact configuration depends on how more or less everything else is set up in your networking configuration.

Well it does raise the question whether squid is working. Do you actually have squid running succesfully? Does it have the right 'listen on' port (3128 is the default, I believe, but it can be configured to use anything)? Squid also does (this may be configurable) a check on whether address resolution when it starts, and, if I remember correctly, issues an error message and quits if it isn't. Are there any error messages in your logs?

I think this is the solution.

vi /etc/bind/debian-edu/named.conf.options
uncomment the section about 'forwarders' and set the IP addresses to the DNS given by my ISP

/etc/init.d/bind9 restart

I am happy. Now browsing works. Aptitude works.