I just installed SuSE 10.0 onto my system and had quite a few difficulties getting it to do DNS lookups properly. The frustrating bit is that I didn't have any problems getting Fedora up and running on the network.

Here is what is happening. I have the following setup in /etc/resolv.conf:
search local
nameserver 192.168.1.7

When I run dnsdomainname it returns "local", as it should. But when I try to query the DNS server, some programs work and some don't.

dig Doesn't work
nslookup Works
ssh Doesn't work
ping Works
Firefox Doesn't work

When dig fails it errors with NXDOMAIN and I can get it to work if I run it with dig +search=local. Why does it work when I specify it in the command line but not when it is in /etc/resolv.conf?


After some searches, I saw some posts that suggested that it might be a problem with ipv6. So I made the following switches to my /etc/modprobe.conf:
- alias sit0 ipv6
+ install sit0 /bin/true
- alias net-pf-10 ipv6
+ alias net-pf-10 off
+ install ipv6 /bin/true

Still doesn't work. Anyone have any thoughts. Thanks in advance.

Hi aequora,

Make sure that you install lwresd and nsswitch (use YaST to find and install them)

Next, make sure that /etc/nsswitch looks like this:

hosts: lwres files dns
networks: lwres files dns

Then, add lwresd to runlevels 3 and 5

Lastly, do an rclwresd restart (or just start, since you've never run it before) then try ping or ssh to a lan host.

Your ping, brower, email, and other clients should now resolve properly as well.

Hi KimVette,

Thanks for the suggestions. I installed lwresd, added the lines to nsswitch.conf, started up the daemon, and it kind of worked. Now ssh and firefox seem to work, though dig still doesn't. I was actually willing to live with a misbehaving dig, but a few minutes after starting in with the new configuration the entire system hung.

Thanks a lot for your help, but I think that this might have ended my voir dire of SuSE. Hitting a wall like this just out of the gates is just too much for me.

hi,
This may be off subject but I had a devil of a time to get suse 10 working properly on the net..Come to find out(after a month) my ethernet driver module"tulip" had a problem so I had to force install 'dfme"
It is documented somewhere but I can't recall where..
As mentioned It may be off subject so ignore it if it is..
goodluck,
jolphil

this is a reason why I always set ISP DNS servers instead of gateway. Assuming that you do use ISP net connection.

so /etc/resolv.conf looks as follows:
nameserver ISP1 DNS server
nameserver ISP1 DNS server
search whaever_you_have_set_locally


why not gateway? Ask SuSE, they seem to have a lot of problems with network config. However I would not count on their help.

One more thing you might try is disabling mdns.

Edit /etc/host.conf and add a line:

mdns off

I also recommend disabling IPv6 if you don't need it. Will speed resolution up considerably since it doesn't have to try twice.

You'll see other posts in these forums on how to do that.