* * * * *
                                        
                                    DNS Woes
                                        
Mark [1] wrote in today to say that reverse lookups for my domain weren't
working properly. And lo, nslookup was having a hard time finding the machine
it was running on.

At first I thought maybe it was a problem with what I was trying to do with
the latest version of bind. You see, I set things up such that I control the
reverse lookup on the 32 IP addresses Atlantic Internet [2] provides me.

This is done via an interesting hack. For the appropriate in-addr.arpa file,
I have:

-----[ data ]-----
0	IN	NS	linus.slab.conman.org.
1	IN	NS	linus.slab.conman.org.
-----[ END OF LINE ]-----

And so on for the 32 addresses I've been assigned. Then, for the namesever
here in the Computer Room, I have:

-----[ data ]-----
1	IN	PTR	isdn.slab.conman.org.
2	IN	PTR	area51.slab.conman.org [3]
3	IN	PTR	linus.slab.conman.org.

32	IN	NS	ns1a.aibusiness.net.
33	IN	NS	ns1a.aibusiness.net.

253	IN	NS	ns1a.aibusiness.net.
254	IN	NS	ns1a.aibusiness.net.
255	IN	NS	ns1a.aibusiness.net.
-----[ END OF LINE ]-----

I've also set the nameserver to think it's a master for the in-addr.arpa zone
I appear in.

So anyway, I thought the latest version of bind wasn't liking that. And it
turned out that was true, to a degree.

There is no such TLD as .apra. Stupid typo.

[1] http://www.conman.org/people/myg/
[2] http://www.aibusiness.net/
[3] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2000/02/25.3

Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org

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