My server is running Debian Lenny and my domain names are all managed by Linode's service. From the outside world name resolution works correctly as far as I can tell. However, from within my Linode some names aren't recognised.

For example if I ping www.wilkesley.org I get an "Unknown host" response. This appears to be a name server problem. My resolv.conf looks like:

domain members.linode.com
  search members.linode.com
  nameserver 72.14.179.5
  nameserver 72.14.188.5

If I change the name servers to be the ip address of ns1.linode and ns2.linode.com, I can ping wilkesley.org. However, something (DHCP) resets the addresses in resolv.conf.

My hosts.conf looks like:

 127.0.0.1 mail.wilkesley.org localhost

  # The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts
  ::1 ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
  fe00::0 ip6-localnet
  ff00::0 ip6-mcastprefix
  ff02::1 ip6-allnodes
  ff02::2 ip6-allrouters
  ff02::3 ip6-allhosts

and /etc/hostname is wilkesley.org.

So what am I doing wrong?

Ian.

You can fix your resolv.conf from dhclient by editing /etc/dhcp3/dhclient.conf adding the following line
supersede domain-name-servers (dnsip1), (dnsip2)
replace the ip to the one you intend to use.

Otherwise you can stop using dhcp and set up static ip in /etc/network/interfaces and stop the dhclient (perhaps better to remove the dhcp-client at all), then nobody will change your resolv.conf again.

actually 72.14.179.5 works pretty fine for me. Maybe u just need to wait the dns record to propagate if you just changed it not long ago.

you can even add your ip to your /etc/hosts such as:
yourip www.wilkesley.org wilkesley.org

laohei.

It looks like wilkesley.org is not configured to use Linode's nameservers:

$ host -t ns wilkesley.org
wilkesley.org           NS      ns8.zoneedit.com
wilkesley.org           NS      ns17.zoneedit.com

So, it's not working from the outside world for me, but is if I directly ask ns1.linode.com:

$ host www.wilkesley.org
www.wilkesley.org A record not found, server failure
$ host www.wilkesley.org ns1.linode.com
www.wilkesley.org       A       72.14.178.130

Changing your resolv.conf is NOT the way to fix this; it will only hide the real problem for you and probably break other things on your Linode. You need to contact your registrar (Tucows Inc., according to whois) and have them change the nameservers to ns1, ns2, ns3, and ns4.linode.com. That will clear it up in short order. -rt

Thanks that was the problem. Somehow the name servers got changed to point at zonedit's name servers, which in turn were pointing at my linode. I have changed the the name servers to Linode's which should fix it.

Ian.