Forward not working in Bind

Can you post the Options portion of your configuration, and what leads you to believe that it is not working?

options {
#
        directory       "/var/named";
        pid-file        "/var/named/named.pid";
        allow-transfer { xxx.xxx/16; };
        transfer-format one-answer;
        };
logging {
        channel my_file {
                file "/var/named/dns.log";
                severity dynamic;
                print-category yes;
                print-severity yes;
                print-time yes;
                };
#       category default { my_file; };
        category update { my_file; };
        category notify { my_file; };
        category xfer-in { my_file; };
        category xfer-out { my_file; };
#       category security { my_file; };
#       category queries { my_file; };
        };

nslookup turns up server cant find domain: Non-existent domain

Still not able to get FORWARD to work...

You have no forwarders in your options. Do you have a root hints zone? If not, there is no where for bind to look up any information.


In your options section you need a forwarders statement such as:

forwarders      { 208.67.222.222; 208.67.220.220; };

(These are the OpenDNS servers. I prefer them over any of my ISP servers as they are more reliable and answer faster. http://www.opendns.com/)
Not directly related to your question, but I would recommend also having an allow-recursion statement in your options section for your local subnets or bind will not fully resolve queries for your local machines.

allow-recursion { 127.0.0.1; xx.xx.xx.xx/16; };

Using the statement forward first in the options section will tell bind to try your forwarders first, and if unsucessful, then proceed to query the root zone servers for an answer.

forward first;

If you do not have a root hints zone, this is how you create one

- Connect to ftp.internic.net as anonymous and download domain/named.root- Place named.root in your /var/named directory and chown it named.named and chmod it to 444
- Add the following zone statement to named.conf (outside of the options statement of course)

zone "." { type hint; file "named.root"; };

Hope that helps
Adrae