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DNS setup

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by dennisbv

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I am setting up DNS on a server that was just upgraded from Winnt 4.0 to Win 2k. I got an article from Microsoft and I think I made a mistake. When first setting up the DNS it created two zones one was "." and one was meelift.com. The article mentioned deleting the "." but I think it was for a different use. How can I get that back. What to I need in my DNS for My server and Exchange 2000.

11 replies

by quintar51

Hi,

the "." zone indicates that this DNS server is a root server. A root server is at the very top of the internet chain, and that's not the case in your situation.

The reason you want to delete that zone is so you can enable forwarders. What forwarders are used for, is for a DNS query that YOUR server does not know about, like www.microsoft.com.

If you have forwarders enabled, they will search for www.microsoft.com and reply with an IP address.

let's say you kept the root zone "." This means if one of your clients or even server itself tried to resolve www.microsoft.com, it would not find it. The server would not pass it to any forwarders, since it has a root zone and it sees itself at the very top, so if it doesn't know about a server, then it doesn't exist.

So right now, I'm not sure if you went and deleted the root zone, or if you still have it and not sure what to do. I would get rid of it. That way, you can enable forwarders (right-click on your DNS server in the DNS console, properties, enter your ISP's DNS servers).

All you need is a forward lookup zone, named meelift.com

In there you create all your various host (A) records and email server records (MX).

hope that made sense to you.

by dennisbv

Here is what I recived from running netdiag.
DNS test . . . . . . . . . . . . . : Passed
[WARNING] The DNS host name 'mee_pdc.meelift' valid only on Windows 2000 DNS Servers. [DNS_ERROR_NON_RFC_NAME]
[WARNING] Cannot find a primary authoritative DNS server for the name
'mee_pdc.meelift.'. [RCODE_SERVER_FAILURE]
The name 'mee_pdc.meelift.' may not be registered in DNS.
PASS - All the DNS entries for DC are registered on DNS server '192.168.1.2'.
LDAP test. . . . . . . . . . . . . : Passed
[WARNING] Failed to query SPN registration on DC 'mee_pdc.meelift'.

by timwalsh

No, you do not need the "." zone. This zone would make your DNS server a "root" server. In effect, this causes your DNS server to say "I know the answers to all DNS queries. If I can't answer it, the answer doesn't exist." This would mean that your DNS server would not forward any DNS queries to the rest of the Internet. This would also mean that your users would never be able to find any resources outside of your local domain.

Having said all that, I have a few questions.
1. How are you connecting to the Internet?
2. Is the "meelift.com" domain a registered Internet domain? If so, did you register the domain, or was the domain registered by your ISP so they could host a website for you?
3. Are you using public or private IPaddresses for your domain?

I think I know what you are trying to do, but want to verify that before going into a long-winded explanation.

by dennisbv

I had upgraded winows NT to win 2k and attempted to upgrade our Exchange 5.5 to 2k(it was stupid of me to attempt both in one day but now I am stuck) The domain name was registered by the isp to host our Web site. We connect to the internet by aDSL connection and we use static IPs for our users

by dennisbv

I looked at what the servers host name was and created a DNS zone to match so now when I run netdiag. I get the note that the host name is valid only on win 2k DNS servers. I also get failed to query SPN registration on DC 'mee_pdc.meelift'.

by rabbit_runner

I too, would recommend that the "." zone be deleted. For the rest of this answer, I will assume that it has been removed.

When you open your DNS console, you will find the zone of meelift.com. Expand this. Do you find 4 sub zones of... _msdcs _sites _tcp _udp, If not, then you do not have DNS configured for Active Directory. One suggestions would be to stop the NETLOGON service, then restart it. This may help you to get DNS configured correctly.

To answer your question, Exchange 2000 requires DNS to resolve names and addressed. Exchange 5.5 and earlier, used NetBIOS to resolve names, before it attempted DNS for outside addresses.

Hope this all helps.

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