dig succeeds, nslookup fails (with dnsmasq as the server)

domain-name-system dnsmasq nslookup dig dns-lookup

7,266

Have you configured your /etc/resolv.conf? If not, it should be as follows:

search mynicedomain.org
nameserver 192.168.0.1

When you use BIND or other DNS Servers, you should change /etc/nsswitch.conf file accordingly.

The following options are available:

dns: Use the Domain Name System (DNS) service to resolve the address. This makes sense only for host address resolution, not network address resolution. This mechanism uses the /etc/resolv.conf file.
files: Search a local file for the host or network name and its corresponding address. This option uses the traditional /etc/hosts and /etc/network files.

Your /etc/nsswitch.conf file should contain a like this, to enable DNS lookups.

hosts:       dns files

7,266

einpoklum

Made my way from the Olympus of Complexity Theory, Probabilistic Combinatorics and Property Testing to the down-to-earth domain of Heterogeneous and GPU Computing, and now I'm hoping to bring the gospel of GPU and massive-regularized parallelism to DBMS architectures. I've post-doc'ed at the DB architecture group in CWI Amsterdam to do (some of) that. I subscribe to most of Michael Richter's critique of StackOverflow; you might want to take the time to read it. If you listen closely you can hear me muttering "Why am I not socratic again already?"

Updated on September 18, 2022

Comments

einpoklum over 1 year
I installed dnsmasq on a machine of mine (It's a Kubuntu 12.04 LTS), backed only by /etc/hosts (no connection to the Internet until later). Now, if I dig mymachine, I get 192.168.0.1, but if I try to nslookup mymachine, I get:
```
>> connection timed out; no servers could be reached
```
Tried also nslookup mymachine.mynicedomain.org - didn't work either. pinging (Edit:) succeeds. This happens both on the server machine itself and on other machines on the network.

How can I get the DNS lookups to work? What problem is preventing nslookup from succeeding?

Additional Information

In the server's /etc/hosts:
```
192.168.0.1   mymachine
```
In the server's nsswitch.conf:
```
hosts: files mdns4_mininal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
```
(admittedly, this is a bit weird; but I also tried:
```
hosts: files dns
```
instead, with the same effect)

In resolv.conf (which is generated by dnsmasq):
```
nameserver 127.0.0.1
search mynicedomain.org
```
In the server's /etc/hosts.allow:
```
domain: ALL    
```
In the other machines' /etc/resolv.conf (this is set by the DHCP client):
```
nameserver 192.168.0.1
search mynicedomain.org
```
Relevant netstat output on the server:
```
Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address           Foreign Address         State
tcp        0      0 127.0.0.1:53            0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN
tcp        0      0 192.168.0.1:53          0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN
```
Finally, here's the ipconfig output from one of the client machines on the network (running Windows 7):
```
Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . : mynicedomain.org
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Intel(R) 82579LM Gigabit Network Connection
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 12-34-56-78-9A-BC
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.50(Preferred)
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : Sunday, October 20th 2013 16:20:25
Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : Sunday, October 20th 2013 18:20:24
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1
DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1
DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1
NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Enabled
```
Notes:
- May be related to this question.
- user9517 over 10 years
  
  So far all you (appear) to know is that dnsmasq is listening and responding on the server's 127.0.0.1 intrface. Is dnsmasq listening on 192.168.0.1 (dig @192.168.0.1 ... | netstat ...)? Can the remote machines contact 192.168.0.1 at all (ping ssh etc )?
- einpoklum over 10 years
  
  @Iain: Yes it is, and yes they can. Updated question accordingly.
- Håkan Lindqvist over 9 years
  
  Do you get any more hints as to what is happening if you do set debug in nslookup before the query?
- einpoklum over 9 years
  
  @HåkanLindqvist: This was over a year ago, I'm no longer experiencing the problem.
Zeeshan over 10 years

Yes, you are correct. I was trying to drill it down step by step. As all the configuration seems correct. I guess the problem is here--> hosts: files mdns4_mininal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4 Check the following link You need to install apt-get install winbind
Zeeshan over 10 years

okay deleted you can check the link in my last comment, if it works for you
einpoklum over 10 years

Well, it turns out pinging actually works. I was running ping with a wrong setup before. The conundrum is still basically the same though.