DNS servers

Hi,

Why do I need to add the local DNS server to /etc/resolv.conf. My DNS servers are configured to only answer for domains they serve. So adding 127.0.0.1 to /etc/resolv.conf will make my system not working.

Error:

Failed to save enabled features : Virtualmin is configured to setup DNS zones, but this system is not setup to use itself as a DNS server. Either add 127.0.0.1 to the list of DNS servers, or turn off the BIND feature on the module config page.

Status: 
Closed (fixed)

Comments

Joe's picture
Submitted by Joe on Fri, 06/19/2009 - 05:08 Pro Licensee

That's actually probably an overly strict bit of advice.

It's there because users often expect the preview features and website editor to work correctly, even before DNS changes have propagated. The only way to insure that is to use the local server for resolution (because we know it has the latest information about domains hosted on the Virtualmin system). We used to get a lot of tickets about these features not working, all because DNS wasn't up to date.

But, if you know that your outside resolvers will always have the latest information (like they are configured as slaves of the Virtualmin name server), then you can ignore this advice and not have 127.0.0.1 in your resolv.conf.

Hi Joe,

It is reported as an error not an advise. This way I'm unable to change settings and I have to add 127.0.0.1 to resolv.conf. If you could change it to a warning which can be ignored that would be great.

thanks, Martijn

PS great improvements on your website!

Joe's picture
Submitted by Joe on Fri, 06/19/2009 - 06:23 Pro Licensee

I've assigned this to Jamie. I think I agree with you here.

Jamie, this should probably be an advisory warning rather than anything we enforce. There are a number of legitimate reasons to not configure things this way (and as long as we're warning about it, we hopefully won't get superfluous tickets about related problems). The warning could explain why this recommendation exists.

There is actually a good reason for this warning - if your system isn't setup to use its own DNS server, you can get into a situation where you have an DNS domain created in Virtualmin that is not registered yet, and so cannot be resolved by the system itself. This breaks things like status monitoring, which expect to be able to resolve the domain names of hosted virtual servers.

However, if you are really sure you don't need this check, go to System Settings -> Module Config -> Advanced options, and change "Check resolv.conf for this system?" to "No".

Automatically closed -- issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.