Suddenly no Reverse

Re: Suddenly no Reverse

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>DNS Expert tells me that 228.22.38.209.in-addr.arpa refers to aspenmall.com
>and it should refer to www.aspenmall.com. So you need to tweak your DNS
>records.

But DNS Expert in this case is incorrect. The reverse record should refer
to ns.zdd.net. Furthermore, Mr. Reiss' servers are not authoritative for
his reverse zone, so it is not *his* DNS records that need tweaking.

>Actually, even more troubling is that I get back "nonauthoritative data
>received from the servers "ns.ossinc.net" and "ns.sopris.net"

This is because the answer was received from another server, reporting
non-authoritative, cached data. The actual servers are actually
authoritative. This is not the problem.

>> Running DNSP 2.1.1 on a Motorola 4000 w/ MacOS 8.5.1.
>>
>> Suddenly, after working fine for a long time I am getting
>>
>> The reverse record "228.22.38.209.in-addr.arpa." does not refer to the host
>> "ns.zdd.net."The reverse record "228.22.38.209.in-addr.arpa." refers to
>> "aspenmall.com.", but it should refer to "ns.zdd.net.".

What is telling you this? DNS Expert? As much as I like the idea of the
program, and as technically accurate as it is, the "error" messages it
gives seem to leave something to be desired. Furthermore, it has a problem
with the common practice of assigning two or more hostnames (A records) to
the same IP address.

This practice is considered a no-no according to the book DNS and Bind
(O'Reilly and Assoc.), or at least it was the last time I read the book
(nearly 3 years ago). However, it is technically legal to do this rather
than use CNAMEs, and resolves faster.

>> Aspenmall.com is one of the virtual domains (w/ Homedoor 2.01).
>>
>> I have looked at all the records and they all point to ns.zdd.net as the
>> primary, as they should.

The problem isn't the name server records. It is that the PTR record points
tothe hostname <aspenmall.com>, while the A record for <ns.zdd.net> points
to this IP address. As I alluded above, this isn't wrong. What is unusual
is that there is no A record for <aspenmall.com>.

It is common practice for a PTR record for a given address to point to a
hostname which has a corresponding A record pointing back. Furthermore, it
is common practice for a PTR record to resolve to the hostname that is
"most important" for the given machine. In this case, that would probably
be <ns.zdd.net>.

Of course, since you're not authoritative for your reverse zone, you need
to contact your ISP if you want to get this changed.

>> It was all working fine until 2 nights ago.

It should still work fine, in terms of web browsers finding your servers
and such. I was easily able to find <http://www.aspenmall.com/>, and typing
in <http://www.zdd.net/> got me to <http://www.strictlyweb.com/> in short
order.

BTW: The clock on the server at <www.strictlyweb.com> is off by about a
year, as evidenced by the date calcs on the front page.

Hope this helps.
________________________________
Chris Buxton
Internet and Database Consultant

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888/4-DPOINT

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