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February 2007

DNS Annoyances


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SideBar    More DNS Tips, DNS-AD Rescue

GUIs Slow Configuration
If you do a lot of DNS server configuration for client systems, you'd probably like a quicker, easier method than using the Windows GUIs. Try these commands at a command prompt. To list all of a client's DNS servers, type
c:\>netsh interface ip
  show dns 

To clear the list of DNS servers for a network adaptor where "Local Area Connection" is the name of that network adaptor, type

c:\>netsh interface ip 
set DNS "Local Area Connection" static none

To add a DNS server for a network adaptor where "Local Area Connection" is the name of that network adaptor, type

c:\>netsh interface ip 
set DNS "Local Area Connection" static 192.168.0.1

Domain DNS Problems
Misconfigured DNS settings are a common source of problems with Windows domains. A quick way to check your settings is to perform a lookup for the domain name itself, which you can do with this command:

c:\>nslookup <yourdomain>

The command should return a list of IP addresses that point to each of your DCs. If you get anything else, check your DNS configuration.

You can also test your DNS configuration by performing a quick network configuration test on any Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 system. From a command prompt, type

c:\>netsh diag show test 

This test pings all DNS servers and gateways in your TCP/IP configuration. If you have the Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit, you can use the netdiag or dnsdiag commands instead, as follows:

C:\>netdiag /test:dns 

or

C:\>dnsdiag

If you want to test your public DNS servers from the outside, you can use either one of these URLs: http://www.dnsreport.com or http://www.dnsstuff.com. To test to see if a remote DNS server allows zone transfers, use this command:

c:\> echo ls -d <targetdomain>
| nslookup - <nameserver>

If the name server allows zone transfers for that domain, it will return all records in the zone. Otherwise, it will return an error.

BIND Is an Acronym, Not a Verb
In a DNS server's properties dialog box, you'll find the BIND Secondaries setting. BIND isn't a verb—it's an acronym for Berkeley Internet Name Domain, which is an implementation of DNS used for handling DNS requests on the Internet.

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