On Tue, Aug 16, 2011 at 12:05 PM, Brett <[email protected]> wrote: > I have customised dhclient.conf so I can use nameservers other than my ISP's. The first one on my list is unreliable, but instead of going to the next on the list, ping, xxxterm and firefox are not finding the sites (ie DNS queries are not being answered).
> When I run dhclient, it generates this file in /etc/resolv.conf: > > nameserver 208.71.35.137 > nameserver 84.22.100.250 > nameserver 67.212.90.199 > > The nameserver at 208.71.35.137 does not seem to be returning DNS queries with the above resolv.conf configuration. > If I try to ping, I get: > > # ping unsw.edu.au > ping: unknown host: unsw.edu.au > # ping ucla.edu > ping: unknown host: ucla.edu > > Also xxxterm and firefox could not find web pages. > eg, xxxterm says: > "Unable to load page > Problem occurred while loading the URL http://public-root.com/root-server-locations.htm > Cannot resolve hostname (public-root.com)" > > (Although one time the page did load - presumably the 208.71.35.137 server came online for a few seconds then back offline again). > > If I comment out the first line of the above resolv.conf, I get: > > # ping unsw.edu.au > PING unsw.edu.au (149.171.96.60): 56 data bytes > 64 bytes from 149.171.96.60: icmp_seq=0 ttl=239 time=201.043 ms > > # ping ucla.edu > PING ucla.edu (169.232.33.224): 56 data bytes > 64 bytes from 169.232.33.224: icmp_seq=0 ttl=48 time=48.711 ms > > This looks to me like if the first nameserver is not responding, the next on the list is ignored. > I looked at the mailing lists and a bunch of man pages: dhclient.conf, dhclient-script, gethostbyname, resolver, resolv.conf, and dhclient and could not see a way to change this behaviour. > > Am I misinterpreting what is happening when the pings are not finding the hosts, or doing something wrong in my config? A quick dig @208.71.35.137 shows it is responding, but not providing an answer. I imagine if 208.71.35.137 was not responding at all, resolv.conf would behave as expected.
