SLES11SP4 DNS Failure requires bind

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server SLES Networking
1

I am limited in my kowledge of Linux, even though I’ve been dabbling in it for several years, and only need it to have OES and Groupwise. I am rebuilding my system with SLES11SP4, and will end up with 3 XEN VMs running this as well as the host.

Thusfar I have got the host up and the first two VMs, with OES2105SP1 working OK.

However, when I went to download the latest GroupWise 2014.R2.SP1, (on the second VM) I discovered Mozilla would not open. Then discovered it would not open on the first VM or the XEN host, even though during the installation process, all products were registered successfully. I have found that while I can ping external IPs with no problem, it won’t resolve host names, and it’s obvious DNS is not working.

So go to Yast and select DNS Configuration (on the XEN Host, initially); I am met with a screen that says “These packages need to be installed” > bind. [So why is this needed now when during the installation everything went well?]. So I click Install, and it comes back and says “Cannot access installation media”. The SLES11SP4 DVD is in the drive, but it wants to connect to nu.novell.com,and of course because of DNS failure, it can’t! Chicken and egg situation. How do I get around this to fix my DNS.

I’ve seen articles about editing /etc/sysconfig/network/config and also /etc/resolve.conf, but I figure I should not have to do that as it should work by design, surely?

Hope someone here can assist, as I don’t think they will let me create an SR for this situation.

Jerome

2

Hi.

There seems to a bit of confusion here we need to solve first.

Your problem is that your hosts cannot resolve DNS names, aka they don’t
properly know to which DNS server they should talk.

What you are trying to do in yast there is to actually install a DNS
server, which you most likely don’t need, and in itself won’t help you.

So you need to know which DNS Server your servers can talk to to be able
to resolve internet host names, and need to point your servers to it.
This is either done in yast network configuration under the DNS Tab, or
much easier, by simply editing /etc/resolv.conf

CU,

Am 03.09.2017 um 13:34 schrieb zexec4:[color=blue]

I am limited in my kowledge of Linux, even though I’ve been dabbling in
it for several years, and only need it to have OES and Groupwise. I am
rebuilding my system with SLES11SP4, and will end up with 3 XEN VMs
running this as well as the host.

Thusfar I have got the host up and the first two VMs, with OES2105SP1
working OK.

However, when I went to download the latest GroupWise 2014.R2.SP1, (on
the second VM) I discovered Mozilla would not open. Then discovered it
would not open on the first VM or the XEN host, even though during the
installation process, all products were registered successfully. I have
found that while I can ping external IPs with no problem, it won’t
resolve host names, and it’s obvious DNS is not working.

So go to Yast and select DNS Configuration (on the XEN Host, initially);
I am met with a screen that says “These packages need to be installed” >
bind. [So why is this needed now when during the installation
everything went well?]. So I click Install, and it comes back and says
“Cannot access installation media”. The SLES11SP4 DVD is in the drive,
but it wants to connect to nu.novell.com,and of course because of DNS
failure, it can’t! Chicken and egg situation. How do I get around this
to fix my DNS.

I’ve seen articles about editing /etc/sysconfig/network/config and also
/etc/resolve.conf, but I figure I should not have to do that as it
should work by design, surely?

Hope someone here can assist, as I don’t think they will let me create
an SR for this situation.

Jerome

[/color]

–
Massimo Rosen
Micro Focus Knowledge Partner
No emails please!
http://www.cfc-it.de

3

Thanks Massimo,
I think I’ve already fixed it. I went into the host’s network configuration and changed the DNS from Manual to use default settings, and then I was able to enter the DNS server settings provided buy the ISP.

The Xen VMs can now also get to external internet sites, but as Firefox still won’t run on one of them, I am removing / reinstalling that.
This would be a different problem now, and not for this forum.

Cheers
Jerome

4

The problem is that you went to ‘DNS Configuration’ when you should have
gone to something about Network Card or something; from the command line
it would simply be:

sudo /sbin/yast lan

The reason is that the network card settings define all aspects of the
local machine’s client networking, including IP, hostname, nameservers,
routing, etc. When you went into the DND stuff from the main portion of
Yast, you were going into the portion that defines and configures a DNS
service, which is why 'it told you to first install ‘bind’, which is the
default DNS service on Linux; in other words, you were telling Yast to
configure the server side when you needed to configure the client side.

–
Good luck.

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