On Sat, 2007-10-20 at 08:53 -0500, Aaron Konstam wrote: > There is something missing in what you say. I assumed we were trying > to decide if my personal router is capable of being a DNS server. So > the first address I placed in the dig command was the address of my > router. Clearly my router is supplying the addresses to my machines > through DNS. At least I think that is clear. But no ANSWER SECTION > appears. Syntax dig <address to be resolved> @<address of the resolver to use> e.g. My router's DNS server is at 192.168.1.254 and I'll ask it to tell me the IP for google. Command example: dig google.com @192.168.1.254 If my router had something that responds to DNS queries, and it can give me an answer for my query, I'll get a result from dig like this: [tim@suspishus ~]$ dig google.com @192.168.1.254 ; <<>> DiG 9.4.2rc1 <<>> google.com @192.168.1.254 ;; global options: printcmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 4989 ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 3, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0 ;; QUESTION SECTION: ;google.com. IN A ;; ANSWER SECTION: google.com. 273 IN A 72.14.207.99 google.com. 273 IN A 64.233.187.99 google.com. 273 IN A 64.233.167.99 ;; Query time: 18 msec ;; SERVER: 192.168.1.254#53(192.168.1.254) ;; WHEN: Sat Oct 20 23:42:59 2007 ;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 76 NB: These results are how dig displays the results it gets from the server, it's reformatted data. But if my router didn't have a DNS server, there'd be a wait, then I'd see a dig result like this: [tim@suspishus ~]$ dig google.com @192.168.1.254 ; <<>> DiG 9.4.2rc1 <<>> google.com @192.168.1.25 ;; global options: printcmd ;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached That's *dig* telling me it couldn't find a server where I told it try. If I asked a DNS server to resolve an address that the server couldn't give an answer for, I'd see a result like this: [tim@suspishus ~]$ dig google @192.168.1.254 ; <<>> DiG 9.4.2rc1 <<>> google @192.168.1.254 ;; global options: printcmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NXDOMAIN, id: 14644 ;; flags: qr aa rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0 ;; QUESTION SECTION: ;google. IN A ;; Query time: 19 msec ;; SERVER: 192.168.1.254#53(192.168.1.254) ;; WHEN: Sat Oct 20 23:45:19 2007 ;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 24 That's the DNS server not providing an answer. All of that's just to do with testing whether a device can be used as your DNS server. Whether it can resolve local addresses, such as addresses associated with IPs it doled out using DHCP (as this thread had some beginnings with), is yet another matter. -- (This computer runs FC7, my others run FC4, FC5 & FC6, in case that's important to the thread.) Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored. I read messages from the public lists.
