Re: trouble with dns possibly?

In reply to my questions, Ian Northeast writes:

>> I tried editing /etc/ppp/resolv.conf and found that it was automatically
>> changed back after I dialed up the ISP.
>
>What gets put in /etc/ppp/resolv.conf when you dial up? What is in
>/etc/resolv.conf?

In /etc/resolv.com, I find:

search domain.com
nameserver 204.71.75.138

This is the address that nslookup seems to be trying to use, as I discovered
by running nslookup interactively and executing the command "server".

In /etc/ppp/resolv.com, I find:

nameserver 198.6.1.6
nameserver 198.6.100.6

>It is possible that you don't have anything in place to copy the former
>to the latter when you dial up, but you manually copied it some time ago
>and the ISP has changed their DNS servers.

Sorry, I don't understand that. Can you explain in a little more detail,
please? Also, what might one "put in place" to do the copying?

Ignorantly,
Allan Adler
(E-Mail Removed)

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Allan Adler wrote:
>
> In reply to my questions, Ian Northeast writes:
>
> >> I tried editing /etc/ppp/resolv.conf and found that it was automatically
> >> changed back after I dialed up the ISP.
> >
> >What gets put in /etc/ppp/resolv.conf when you dial up? What is in
> >/etc/resolv.conf?
>
> In /etc/resolv.com, I find:
>
> search domain.com
> nameserver 204.71.75.138

That belongs to "Campus MCI Internet" in Sacramento CA and either isn't
a nameserver or isn't publicly accessible.

> This is the address that nslookup seems to be trying to use, as I discovered
> by running nslookup interactively and executing the command "server".
>
> In /etc/ppp/resolv.com, I find:
>
> nameserver 198.6.1.6
> nameserver 198.6.100.6

Those belong to UUNET, registered in Ashburn, VA and definitely are
nameservers. So these are the correct ones.

> >It is possible that you don't have anything in place to copy the former
> >to the latter when you dial up, but you manually copied it some time ago
> >and the ISP has changed their DNS servers.
>
> Sorry, I don't understand that. Can you explain in a little more detail,
> please? Also, what might one "put in place" to do the copying?

On a system here which started life as RH5.2, there is a script
/etc/ppp/ip-up which calls /etc/ppp/ip-up.local. This looks for scripts
in directories /etc/ppp/ppp0.d/up and /etc/ppp/ppp0.d/down as the
interface comes up and down respectively.

So, if yours is the same, you could put a script in the up directory to
save the contents of /etc/resolv.conf and replace it with
/etc/ppp/resolv.conf, and one in the down directory to restore the
original.

I don't know about 7.1 but in later Linux versions there is more of a
tendency to provide default scripts to do this sort of thing for you.

For the time being, assuming you don't need DNS servers when not dialled
up (you said you didn't have a LAN so this should be the case) you can
just copy /etc/ppp/resolv.conf over /etc/resolv.conf. This will make it
work, but it will break if UUNET decide to move their servers.

Regards, Ian