DNS server related errors

These are some of the issues which I had faced while working on the DNS server along with their solution. Kindly update me in the comment box with any other errors or problem you face while working with DNS servers.


Error 1:
# service named restart
Starting named:
Error in named configuration: /etc/named.rfc1912.zones:10: zone '.': already exists previous definition: /etc/named.root.hints:12
Solution:
There is a double entry of zone'.' section in named.rfc.1912.zones and named.root.hints

So remove the zone'.' section from any one of the both i.e. named.rfc.1912.zones or named.root.hints

Error 2:
Unable to ping the network or internet after configuring DNS server

Solution:

This means that you have not configured your DNS server properly and the error is no where related to zone files. So check your named.conf and named.rfc.1912.zones file.

Check the permissions on these files as we donot check the permission on these files once we copy it from the default location.

The permission on these files should look like this
# ls -l /var/named/chroot/etc/named*
-rw-r--r--. 1 root named 7731 May 16 10:11 named.conf
-rw-r--r--. 1 root named 2544 Jan 10 14:36 named.iscdlv.key
-rw-r--r--. 1 root named 1159 May 16 10:09 named.rfc1912.zones
-rw-r--r--. 1 root named 487 Jan 10 14:36 named.root.key
Error 3:

This is quite unusual problem and hopefully you won't get this issue but still in case face this problem when it happens that your DNS server is configured properly but still your are unable to connect to internet.

Solution:

This generally happens due to difference in the default time zone selected and the date or time of the local machine is different. So update the date and time of your local machine as per the time zone selected (for eg in INDIA we select Asia/Calcutta).

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