Re: question about hostname
On Monday 27 August 2001 09:31, Martin F Krafft wrote:
> also sprach Cliff Sarginson (on Mon, 27 Aug 2001 07:48:11AM +0200):
> > Hello .. "search" and "domain" are mutually exclusive btw.
> > The last one in the file is what wins...
>
> are you serious? i must admit that i never really knew what "domain"
> did, but i didn't know that they were mutually diskliking each other.
> do you have docs about that? not that i disbelieve you, just
> interest...
The behaviour resulting from the domain directive is a little
complicated to explain. The domain used to resolve addresses is
normally the domain part of the full host name..so if your host is
jabberwocky.carrol.net
then your default domain is "carrol.net".
If you have a hostname without dots, e.g. just "jabberwocky" then the
default domain is the root domain "." which is useless...!
If you use the domain directive you specify a new default domain. e.g
domain lewis.net
Then lookups will use this domain instead of rhe implied default. This
is your search list.
If you just type a host name for resolution that is first looked up
as is, if it is not found then the domain part is appended and a new
serach begun.
The search directive allows you to specify a number of domains to
search, up to 6 I believe. The first name in the search list because the
default domain. hence any preceding domain definition is just
ignored.
This is somewhat different in older versions of bind..but I doubt
you are running one of those.
There is more to the story than this .. trailing dots for example..but
that is my two-pennyworth for now.
If you want to understand DNS buy the bible O'Reilly book.. DNS and
BIND. I think their is a bind user's manual in the distro as well.
One of the real headaches with setting up DNS is typing mistakes...that
may not raise an error from bind or the resolver..and can be a pain
to find. There is a DNS checking program whose name escapes me..someone
else doubtless remembers it.
You can put any garbage you like in resolv.conf btw, you will never
get an error .. lol.
Good Luck
Cliff
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