Gotcha! I'm on page, now. I built our Win2K domain, so I do have a solid grasp on DNS architecture.
Win2K Active Directory uses DDNS (thus the RFC link). You're probably right; that's probably why it was working off-the-bat. That's what Windows is good at. But if anything ever goes even mildly technically wrong... (I'm not going to tell you about the DNS errors that have appeared on our network, but there's no Q article telling me how to fix them, I can tell you that much. Even many packet captures later...) Hehehe, I digress. ;-P So the trick now is to send Superreal.com the addy for the external NIC, whenever it changes. I've never done this on Linux. :-( Bah, some help, huh? :-) If your DNS entries were working before, that's all the functionality you should need. Your port forwarding _should_ be good, and your DNS records _should_ be good (at least the way they were originally, before the 192.168.0.x addy was uploaded). Maybe I'll do some research on doing DDNS for Linux, I've always wanted to know, and now I have the perfect excuse to dig in. :-D Some initial thoughts, though, jumping off Aaron's thinking... If you have BIND installed and running on your router or home network, and your router can register its external NIC addy with BIND (on your home network), then BIND could do a DNS transfer and upload that info to Superreal's DNS servers. That's a bit of a messy implementation though, and more complicated that it needs to be, due to the DNS zone transfers. The simplest would be to have the router fire off a host record update to Superreal's DNS servers for you when the external IP changes. Sounds like a job for scripting. Of course, someone's probably already thought of this, and has implemented correctly, I just need to do the Googling to find out what it looks like. Congrats on having your own e-mail hosting, etc. It's a real nice-to-have! I'm happy to help you make sure it's as easy to administer as possible. :-) Curtis. -----Original Message----- From: Shawn Grover [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, February 10, 2003 5:59 PM To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' Subject: RE: (clug-talk) Dynamic DNS help? My W2K box is configured for web, email (Exchange) and .NET (hence the reason for the existence of the box, and my background is much stronger on the Windows end <grins>). It is running Active Directory for my domain (open2space.com). I think the AD might have something to do with how things WERE working. I had DNS configured (for AD), so added the A records and CNAME records for my server. This was running fine, until I decided that RRAS on Windows sucked, and put in the Linux router. The Linux router sits between my network and a Telus DSL connection. DHCP for the external NIC, and a static IP of 192.168.0.1 for the internal. The server has a static IP of 192.168.0.15. I have tried it with it using Superreal as it's DNS servers, as well as my router (first didn't work, so tried the second). Superreal has 192.168.0.15 as my domains IP address - so of course, nobody can see me (being a non-routable address). This happened when I was setting up the Linux router. The external port of the router is 209.x.x.x - this is the address I need updated to Superreal. The router is configured for port forwarding - if I use the IP address things are working properly and I can bring up my web site (just a image for now so I know it IS my server I'm talking to), and I can FTP to my server. My primary goal is to get the email running, the web site/ftp is secondary. I finally hit the point where I want to have my OWN email address that does not rely on me staying employed at my current job, or hoping an ISP stays in business and keeps me happy enough to stay with them. By doing this myself (as opposed to hosting), I can control my server and it's resources, and learn a whole bunch in the process. :D I also have some plans for the domain once things stabilize for it. (low volume stuff for now). I'm going to read through the RFC tonight - those are ALWAYS encredibly boring, but, a necessary evil.. Maybe I'll find something that helps. Thanks again Curtis. Shawn -----Original Message----- From: Curtis Sloan [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, February 10, 2003 5:43 PM To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' Subject: RE: (clug-talk) Dynamic DNS help? Yes, I see... you're not necessarily running the Win2K DNS server component, you just have Win2K Server configured to use DNS (just like any other computer). Right? :-D What I am poking around at is whether is it in fact a DNS issue, or just a firewall/port forwarding issue. What IPs do you want dynamically updated (feel free to sanitize, or spoof -- I'm just trying to figure things out)? Is this because you host a web server or something, but use a DHCP-based host like Shaw? And what are you doing using a Win2K server on a Linux network, anyways?! ;-) lol -----Original Message----- From: Shawn Grover [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, February 10, 2003 5:35 PM To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' Subject: RE: (clug-talk) Dynamic DNS help? I didn't have to specifically configure forwarders, but the DNS servers for the server were pointing to Superreal. Does that help? -----Original Message----- From: Curtis Sloan [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, February 10, 2003 5:21 PM To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' Subject: RE: (clug-talk) Dynamic DNS help? Shoot, that last one slipped... Sorry. :-P --- Well, this may not be "help" is the best sense, but maybe it will help me understand the question better. Dynamic Updates in the Domain Name System (DNS UPDATE): http://rfc.sunsite.dk/rfc/rfc2136.html Is this what you're referring to? Hmmm, as far as Win2K DNS goes, do you have forwarders enabled, and are they pointing to the Superreal nameservers? (Right-click server name | Properties | Forwarders tab). -----Original Message----- From: Shawn Grover [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, February 10, 2003 4:48 PM To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' Subject: (clug-talk) Dynamic DNS help? I was asking a couple people at the Installfest how to update my DNS host with my dynamic IP address. I was directed to the client scripts at www.dyndns.org. I took a look through those, but it appears all of them require an account with DynDNS themselves (or another similar service). However, this is not my case. I've posted this before, but for the sake of completeness, I'll reiterate the problem: I have DNS hosting through Superreal.com (srns1.superreal.net, and srns2.superreal.net). If I configure DNS on my Win2K server, it updates Superreal properly. However, I now have the W2K server behind a Linux firewall. The IP address that gets reported/updated now is an internal 192.168.x.x address. So, it would appear I need to move my DNS server to my Linux router (it's a RH8 bare bones installation, with Bind). Not being that experienced with DNS at this level, I need some guidance. I think I have to treat my Bind installation as a primary, and have it update a Superreal as a slave. I'm not 100% sure this is the solution to my problem, but it's the next logical step I can see. Can anyone tell me if I'm out to lunch with this approach, or if it is the right approach, how to proceed? (even a web resource would be greatly appreciated). Thanks for the help! And what a coincidence that Jason's post appeard while I was typing this.... LOL Shawn Grover
