winXP buggering up it's DNS

[TdC]

hello peeplets!

recently I have made a change to my internal DNS server to allow it to resolve my domain alphanor.org to the internal IP number of the box that actually is my webserver as opposed to what the external IP happens to be. All is well and good.

Now, if I start up my game box, which runs WinXP with all the bells and whistles needed to actually make it work, I find that after a "while" the pc stops resolving my domain properly, but if it's just booted all works fine. By resolving I mean asking the internal DNS server what's what. The internal DNS is configered to ask external DNS if it can't resolve a domain thusly allowing me to get to freddyshouse.

Needless to say that there are computers running unix flavours in my home lan, and I've tested it on them. The unix boxes get it right every time, so I'm lead to believe that Windows has a strange way of looking up names, or perhaps uses some idiot cache or somesuch. I've tried the flushdns thing, but that doesn't work once the XP decides to stop resolving.

anyone have any ideas?

 

[sibanac]

wierd one that is.

Does the xp machine just stop making dns requests or does it still makes em and then do nothing with it ?

 

[TdC]

nah, it's only the single domain that stops working. I think it somehow times out. Either XP does or the freebsd dns server does, and then goes to the external dns, which resolves alphanor.org to it's external IP numner and tells the browser to connect to that. this doesn't work due to natting and stuff, so I get a window popping up telling me the site is unavailable.
I just can't work out where it's going wrong :/

 

[sibanac]

got any traces of the dns trafic between the 2 ?

if its windows timingout here is how you change the defaults

 

[TdC]

ooh, ta, I'll give it a shot!

 

[TdC]

silly me, I think I got it:

my webserver calls itself alphanor.org internally, and my DNS knows it as www.alphanor.org. now, that's not too much of a problem....but.... if you type "www.alphanor.org" into a browser it tried to resolve "alphanor.org" and if you typed "www.alphanor.org/" into a browser it would end up resolving www.alphanor.org. funky, but I think I've nailed it now

 

[sibanac]

let me know how it works out, I have to setup the same thing at company soon .

what dns server are you using btw ?
I jam just wondering if there is anything besides bind for small sites

 

[TdC]

bind hehe waay overkill for 7 machines, but I need DNS for www and mail stuff. there are many different dns implementations though it seems. you can pick and choose

 

[sibanac]

bind hehe waay overkill for 7 machines, but I need DNS for www and mail stuff. there are many different dns implementations though it seems. you can pick and choose

yeah got the same prob, all i'll be running is www a fetchmail-> postfix->amavis/spamassassin/clamav-> cyrus imap setup and a vpn.
Bind is way overkill but I dont realy want to use some unknow dns server either.

oh well atleast i dont have to worry about sendmail anymore