This is a confusing topic to me. I've tried to decipher the answer to this question... from FAQs, forums, google, etc. and figure out specifically what, if anything, it is I need to do.
It seems like everywhere I look to resolve this confusion, the how-tos, FAQs, etc. and all the examples I find are for servers with a static ip.

Here is the problem:

I have DSL connection with a dynamic IP on eth0 on my Slackware Linux firewall/nat/gateway. I'm using the IPTables/NetFilter NARC firewall and my lan behind my firewall is on my 192.168.0. network.

When I use XChat to connect to IRC I always get the following message and a lengthy delay before it finally connects:

--- Looking up irc.freenode.net..
--- Connecting to orwell.freenode.net (213.28.116.205) port 6667..
--- Connected. Now logging in..
--- *** Looking up your hostname...
--- *** Checking ident
--- *** Your forward and reverse DNS don't match
--- *** No identd (auth) response

I don't have a true registered 'fully qualified domain name', although I do have an account on a DHS server that routes connections to me if needed.

On my lan I have various hosts on my 'made up' domain name. My /etc/hosts files look something like this:

127.0.0.1 localhost
192.168.0.14 jepetus.smatrix.org jepetus
192.168.0.24 azreal.smatrix.org azreal
192.168.0.2 genesis.smatrix.org genesis
192.168.0.3 lordsoth.smatrix.org lordsoth
192.168.0.7 lenny.smatrix.org lenny
192.168.0.11 zeus.smatrix.org zeus

my resolv.conf files point to my ISP's nameservers.

Is this 'reverse DNS' thing something that I need to put in named.conf? I haven't really tried to set up anything except a local caching name server... that I'm not even really using, and setting up it was simply following steps on a how-to...

So, what do I need to do? Edit named.conf? With what? Do I have to have a name server to resolve this? Do I edit some configuration file for identd? tcpd? inetd? What??? Does my ISP have to provide a reverse lookup or something? Is there some ports I need to enable on my firewall (53?)?


Dazed and Confused -

Neoslak

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Linux, the free OS....except for your SOUL! MOUHAHAHAHA!