SUMMARY: Wierd DNS / NIS problem

From: Nils K. Schoyen (nils@norsar.no)
Date: Tue Jun 01 1999 - 01:51:06 CDT


Hello again!

Thanks to Roy Culley and Gustavo Chaves who responded to this mail.
Unfortunaltely, their suggestions did not solve our problems :-(

The problem was solved like this:

  o Power down ALL NIS-client
  o Power down NIS-server
  o Power up NIS-server
  o Power up the NIS-clients

It seems as if the NIS-clients where unable to succesfully re-establish
the connection to the NIS-server when the server had been down for more
than e.g. two hours. Taking the NIS-server down for e.g. 30 minutes or so
works fine, but when the server is down for a longer period, the NIS-clients
fails to re-establish the connection.

Regards,

Nils K. Schøyen
NORSAR

Original posting:
 
> We are having some wierd problems with DNS...
>
> DNS server: Solaris 7. Ultra 1/170.
> NIS server: Solaris 7. Ultra Enterprise 250.
>
> The NIS server use the domain name resolver for hosts
> not in the current domain (B=-b in /var/yp/Makefile).
>
> The NIS-server, NIS-clients and all other hosts uses
> /etc/resolv.conf. The first nameserver entry points to
> our DNS server, second entry point to slave server.
>
> Up until yesterday everything was OK. But now, strange
> things happen...
>
> DNS-server-Sol7# ping www.sun.com
> www.sun.com is alive
>
> NIS-server-Sol7# ping www.sun.com
> ping: unknown host www.sun.com
>
> NIS-client-Sol7# ping www.sun.com
> ping: unknown host www.sun.com
>
> PC c:\> ping www.sun.com
> www.sun.com is alive
>
> The /etc/nsswitch.conf entry for all hosts is
>
> hosts: nis [NOTFOUND=return] files
>
> If I put dns in after nis, everything works fine...
>
> We tried to put in lines in named.boot to only allow zone transfers to
> the master and slave name server two days ago. These lines has now been
> removed again due to the strange behaviour of DNS.



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