[Gllug] now DNS difficulties :-) strange SMTP stuff

[Robert McKay]

On Thu, 18 Jul 2002, Xander D Harkness wrote:

> Having set the IP addresses correctly there are a couple of domains that 
> are experiencing difficulty resolving the mx records for the domain 
> mactelecom.com.

> Now I know that there are many name servers that can correctly resolve 
> the mx records, the fact that there are some that cannot is my fault and 
> my responsability to resolve (So I have been toild by those that pay me ;-)

> The errors that are returned from the mail servers are failure to 
> resolve MX records.  These nameservers seem to resolve other domains 
> okay hosted on the same nameservers (harkness.co.uk for example).  Is 
> there something stupid I have done (Just like the IPs :-)

> In addition would other people work with the owners of the other 
> nameservers or consider it their problem - they will have to sort it out?

> Two of these domains that are having difficulty are alcatel.be and cofino.be

> alcatel has four name servers (I am guessing that these are the servers 
> used by their mail servers)
> ;; ANSWER SECTION:
> alcatel.be.             10624   IN      NS      ns.alcatel.be.
> alcatel.be.             10624   IN      NS      ns.alcatel.co.uk.
> alcatel.be.             10624   IN      NS      secdns.eunet.be.
> alcatel.be.             10624   IN      NS      ns.alcanet.no.
> 
> ####################################
> by querying using dig @ns.alcatel.be mactelecom.com mx

> the first says no name servers could be found - even if I put +trace on 
> the end.  In short it looks dead.

ns.alcatel.be appears to be down.. it doesn't respond to any queries. None
of that really proves anything though. We don't even know if the
mailservers use those nameservers at all.. there's no particular reason
why they should - those are external nameservers and arguably should even
be configured to deny all recursive lookups (they don't appear to be
though).

Your assertion that harkness.co.uk is served from the same nameservers
appears to be misleading. harkness.co.uk is served from:

DAVROS.WILDTHORN.COM              213.48.46.196
SPITFIRE.WILDTHORN.COM            213.48.46.206

ns1/ns2.harkness also serve as backup NS however in this case
ns1.harkness.co.uk (the broken one) is only 1/4th of your rotation instead
of 1/2.

Whereas mactelecom.com is served from:

NS1.HARKNESS.CO.UK           80.234.135.41 <-- this does not respond.
NS2.HARKNESS.CO.UK           80.234.135.42

I notice those appear to be tele2.co.uk IPs.. are they wireless?

17 packets transmitted, 13 packets received, 23% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 188.5/358.4/1218.6 ms

That's my ping stats from 80.234.135.42 .. not exactly ideal for your only
working nameserver. I suspect that's likely the cause.. Only one
nameserver working and it has 23% packet loss. :/

Regards,

Robert.



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