DNS only works as root with Verizon DSL/Netgear router

I just got Verizon DSL and am connecting to it using a Netgear RT311
router. My problem is that I'm having trouble doing name resolution. I
can run nslookup/host/etc as root and can run lynx as root but if I
run mozilla, netscape4.x or opera as user, I get "foo.com could not be
found" errors unless I type the IP address of the web site into the
browser location bar. Strangely, this appears to also happen if I run
mozilla as root.

When I get my IP address from the router, the following gets written
to my /etc/resolv.conf:

search verizon.net
nameserver 192.168.0.1

where 192.168.0.1 is the IP address of the router on the local
network.

I've tried changing the nameserver to one of Verizon's (151.197.0.38)
but that doesn't seem to wwork either.

Any ideas as to what's going wrong?

dave wrote:
> I just got Verizon DSL and am connecting to it using a Netgear RT311
> router. My problem is that I'm having trouble doing name resolution. I
> can run nslookup/host/etc as root and can run lynx as root but if I
> run mozilla, netscape4.x or opera as user, I get "foo.com could not be
> found" errors unless I type the IP address of the web site into the
> browser location bar. Strangely, this appears to also happen if I run
> mozilla as root.
>
> When I get my IP address from the router, the following gets written
> to my /etc/resolv.conf:
>
> search verizon.net
> nameserver 192.168.0.1
>
> where 192.168.0.1 is the IP address of the router on the local
> network.
>
> I've tried changing the nameserver to one of Verizon's (151.197.0.38)
> but that doesn't seem to wwork either.
>
> Any ideas as to what's going wrong?
put the line:
PEERDNS=yes
in your /etc/sysconfig/ifcfg-<ifname> file

HTH
Neil

--
/************************************************** *
*Neil Horman
*Software Engineer
*Red Hat, Inc., www.redhat.com
*gpg keyid: 1024D / 0x92A74FA1
*http://www.keyserver.net
************************************************** */

dave wrote:
> I just got Verizon DSL and am connecting to it using a Netgear RT311
> router. My problem is that I'm having trouble doing name resolution. I
> can run nslookup/host/etc as root and can run lynx as root but if I
> run mozilla, netscape4.x or opera as user, I get "foo.com could not be
> found" errors unless I type the IP address of the web site into the
> browser location bar. Strangely, this appears to also happen if I run
> mozilla as root.

Check permissions on /etc/resolv.conf, /etc/nsswitch.conf and, if it
exists, /etc/host.conf. All should be world readable.

Possibly Mozilla is giving up some root privileges for security reasons.

Regards, Ian

Neil Horman <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message news:<boasti$5dm$(E-Mail Removed)>...
> dave wrote:
> > I just got Verizon DSL and am connecting to it using a Netgear RT311
> > router. My problem is that I'm having trouble doing name resolution. I
> > can run nslookup/host/etc as root and can run lynx as root but if I
> > run mozilla, netscape4.x or opera as user, I get "foo.com could not be
> > found" errors unless I type the IP address of the web site into the
> > browser location bar. Strangely, this appears to also happen if I run
> > mozilla as root.
> >
> > When I get my IP address from the router, the following gets written
> > to my /etc/resolv.conf:
> >
> > search verizon.net
> > nameserver 192.168.0.1
> >
> > where 192.168.0.1 is the IP address of the router on the local
> > network.
> >
> > I've tried changing the nameserver to one of Verizon's (151.197.0.38)
> > but that doesn't seem to wwork either.
> >
> > Any ideas as to what's going wrong?
> put the line:
> PEERDNS=yes
> in your /etc/sysconfig/ifcfg-<ifname> file
>

Thanks for your reply.

/etc/sysconfig didn't exist, so I created that directory and ran

echo "PEERDNS=yes" > ifconfig-eth0

where eth0 is my ethernet card that's hooked up to the hub that's
hooked up to the router.
After that, I ran inetd restart in /etc/init.d and renewed my IP
address with pump (pump -r;pump -k;pump just to be safe), but DNS
still doesn't work. I'm not sure if restarting inetd was the way to go
or not, since I don't know a whole lot about what's where in the init
scripts. My resolv.conf still looks exactly the same.

One thing I forgot to mention in my initial post is that, while IP
address lookups with host work when I'm logged in as root, when I try
to do that as user I get the following:

$ host google.com
Nameserver not running
google.com A record not found, try again

I'm also running Debian testing with Mozilla 1.5 from unstable, if
that's any help.

It finally occurred to me to check the permissions on /etc/resolv.conf
and noticed that it's now a symlink to /etc/ppp/resolv.conf
Both the directory (/etc/ppp) and the file (resolv.conf) were owned by
root and had permissions set so that only owner and group (also root)
could read them. After changing permissions, I can now do DNS lookups
as user, browse with lynx and, I assume, browse with mozilla but won't
find out until I get home.

Stupid of me not to check that earlier. I think one of the options I
chose -- or failed to choose -- when I was fooling around with
pppoe-rp must've done that (it had an option for "allow user access"
or something like that).

Thanks once again, Neil, for your response.


(E-Mail Removed) (dave) wrote in message news:<(E-Mail Removed). com>...
> I just got Verizon DSL and am connecting to it using a Netgear RT311
> router. My problem is that I'm having trouble doing name resolution. I
> can run nslookup/host/etc as root and can run lynx as root but if I
> run mozilla, netscape4.x or opera as user, I get "foo.com could not be
> found" errors unless I type the IP address of the web site into the
> browser location bar. Strangely, this appears to also happen if I run
> mozilla as root.
>
> When I get my IP address from the router, the following gets written
> to my /etc/resolv.conf:
>
> search verizon.net
> nameserver 192.168.0.1
>
> where 192.168.0.1 is the IP address of the router on the local
> network.
>
> I've tried changing the nameserver to one of Verizon's (151.197.0.38)
> but that doesn't seem to wwork either.
>
> Any ideas as to what's going wrong?

Ian Northeast <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message news:<(E-Mail Removed)>...
> dave wrote:
> > I just got Verizon DSL and am connecting to it using a Netgear RT311
> > router. My problem is that I'm having trouble doing name resolution. I
> > can run nslookup/host/etc as root and can run lynx as root but if I
> > run mozilla, netscape4.x or opera as user, I get "foo.com could not be
> > found" errors unless I type the IP address of the web site into the
> > browser location bar. Strangely, this appears to also happen if I run
> > mozilla as root.
>
> Check permissions on /etc/resolv.conf, /etc/nsswitch.conf and, if it
> exists, /etc/host.conf. All should be world readable.
>
> Possibly Mozilla is giving up some root privileges for security reasons.


That was the problem... I'm reading this with google groups, so I
didn't get this followup until after I'd already figured the problem
out and posted the "FIXED" followup.

You're probably right about mozilla. I'll have to look that up.

Anyway, thanks again.