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amoos
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How to configure enter in internal DNS on netware 6.5 servers???

we are running netware 6.5 and we moved our dns to our isp.  i need to figure out how to configure internal dns so my users do not have to type in ip addresses to get to internal servers.  how do i do this???  i know that i have to go to the resolv.cfg file on the sys volume but what is the correct syntax for putting in the values??  for example if i want to put in a nameserver then i would do  nameserver space the ip address.  how do i do it for other internal servers??
Novell NetwareDNS

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ShineOn

8/22/2022 - Mon
ShineOn

http://www.novell.com/documentation/oes2/ntwk_dnsdhcp_nw/data/front.html

If you need specific info, let me know.

Simply using the resolv.cfg on the server won't help a whole lot for internal DNS name resolution, unless you already have an internal DNS server running somewhere that you can point at in resolv.cfg.
amoos

ASKER
so what you are saying is that even if i put into the resolv.cfg file on all my novell servers the internal address i want my users to use it won't work??

for example i want to have my users internally go to mail.mydomain.edu instead of having to type in an ip address in their browser.

so can i put in the resolv.cfg file mail.mydomain.edu x.x.x.x(ip address) and restart the server?  just like you would on a pc host file??
ShineOn

Nope, won't work.

The resolv.cfg file is like the DNS server list in the Windows TCP/IP configuration - it only lists name resolvers - DNS servers.

You *could* put a list of internal names and addresses in the sys:etc/hosts file, and then have the NetWare server's own address in resolv.cfg ahead of the ISP's name server's address.  That might make the hosts file publicly accessible to the local network for name resolution - not sure.  I think I used to do it that way sometime last century, in another life...

The sure way to do it is to use a DNS server.  If you want to use the one that comes with NetWare, you use NAMED.NLM.  If you want to use one on Linux, it would probably be a NAMED as well (name daemon).  If you use Windoze (echh) DNS, it's a service on a Windoze server.

Regardless, once you have a DNS server running, you can point to it with resolv.cfg - and you can put *real* DNS records in the DNS server - "A" records for hosts, "PTR" records for reverse-lookup, "CNAME" records for aliasing, "MX" records for SMTP server mail exchange, NS for name servers, etc. - and you can also use that same DNS server that's serving your internal addresses as a local caching forwarder, meaning you can have it forward requests to the external DNS on your ISP, and cache the results, so further requests for the same URL get resolved internally instead of doing another lookup from your ISP.  It's really a better way to set things up, IMHO, than manually maintaining HOSTS files and having all unresolved requests go to the ISP.
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rwheeler23
amoos

ASKER
so if i modify the hosts file in the novell server and point my computer towards the novell server will that do it or am i way off base

great help
amoos

ASKER
i talked with novell to ask them if i could use the resolv.cfg file on the novell servers for my internal dns and they said that should work.  is this true??  what do you think??
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ShineOn

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