Single DNS Zone not working... checked everything I can think of

Hi

I have a strange problem. I set up anywhere from 5-20 new zones each week on my DNS server running BIND. For some reason this last record I have set up doesn't seem to be visible to the outside world. I have re-set up this zone 4 times. 3 times through manual editing, and once using the webmin interface for BIND (just in case I was missing something). I have also restarted named each time to make the changes take affect.

I have checked the spelling and format of the record and zone, and all seems to be ok. I also checked to make sure the correct domain was registered, and the nameservers were correct.

The reason I find this so strange is that all other records on the machine are working fine, and all the zones (including the one for leisurelakefamilycampground.com) are being successully transfered to the other DNS machines, yet it doesn't work.

The domain name is long, but I can't find any reference to a maximum length. The domain name is: leisurelakefamilycampground.com

In addition, if you try to look up the site with dnsreport.com, it finds the parent servers but shows that my servers don't answer for the domain. I don't get this.

I will attach the named.conf entry for leisurelake and resource record file.

Help is appeciated

The zone that isnt' working is leisurelakefamilycampground.com yes? No, it's not long enough to hit that maximum domain length of 254 characters.

"Not working" is pretty generic, so let's go through the entire process of elimination of variables. First stop, your name servers. Are the below name servers currect?

dig leisurelakefamilycampground.com

Cause if they are, I have a problem with two of them.

rufus.ispmgt.com and webcube.ispmgt.com don't have zone file 'A' entries.

That is correct, but that doesn't explain why the other 200+ entries resolve. I will add the necessary records but I doubt it will change anything.

On a side note, I just added another zone and resource record and it works fine. It worked as soon as I restarted named.


I still don't know what's wrong

rufus and webcube are still lacking 'A' records. Since 'hosting' has an 'A' record then you might be safe from intermittant resolution failures. This does tend to make 'hosting' get the heaviest share of traffic though. Since your name server domains are pretty screwy, we'll continue testing using IPs.

dig @66.103.243.195 leisurelakefamilycampground.com
dig @66.103.237.2 leisurelakefamilycampground.com
dig @66.103.243.194 leisurelakefamilycampground.com

None of your servers are authoritative for your domain. I recommend that you check the spelling of your attempt to add the domain to your server.

I added the A records. It still shouldnt affect this problem as we have seen using the name server IP's.

I checked, rechecked, and checked the spelling in the zone entry and the resource record file

zone "leisurelakefamilycampground.com" {
type master;
file "/system/dns/leisurelakefamilycampground.com.hosts";
};

This is correct, and so is the spelling in the "/system/dns/leisurelakefamilycampground.com.hosts file.

I can see that the zone is in both servers 194 and 195, but it doesn't show up in the dig.

This is why I am having such a hard time with this - it is there but the nameserver doesn't answer for it! (yes, I have been restarting after every change)

I appreciate your help

Any more suggestions?

Out of curiosity, how have you tried "restarting" the server? Are you actually reloading it? HUP'ing it? reconfig'ing it? Or shutting it down then starting it back up again?

Please attach for me your /etc/named.conf.

(recieved PM). Hundreds of entries in that file huh? Well nevermind, I guess I don't need to see it. BIND8 though... I don't even know if BIND8 supports "ndc stats". I suppose I could look it up if I weren't a lazy boo. But that's one of the ideas I had on checking to see if the file exists on the server without using DNS.

The other more effective test is seeing your startup messages. Perhaps there's an error log in there that concerns the domain. At the very least I would like to see it say that it loaded the domain.

Forgive me, but I am not quite sure where to be looking for such a log, or how I can see the statup messages. I was only taught how to edit the conf file, create the resouce record, and to restart DNS to apply the changes.

Can you be a little more specific on where to look/what to do to see the messages?

I appeciate your help.

Do you have a logging {} block in your named.conf? If so, I want to see it. If not, let me know.

No, there is no logging block. I can add it if you give me the syntax/instructions.

Thanks

Here's something real simple. Log everything except maybe queries to activity.log found in the same directory as your zone files.



Put that in your named.conf after the options {} block and before all zone {} blocks and restart your server. No, not just a reload, a restart.

Then I want you to run this command for me on the dns server:

grep 'camp' /var/named/activity.log