[BkueKanoodle]

Ok heres one for you. I have 2 subnets in the office. One subnet is at 192.168.0.XXX the other is 192.168.1.xxx.

The 192.168.0.xxx subnet is our internal Lan
the 192.168.1.1 subnet is in our DMZ.

On my windows laptop if I set my 10/100 network card to use a static ip address in the 192.168.0.xxx range, with the address of the internal DNS servers and NO Gateway, and then set the TCP/IP properties on my wireless card to sit in the DMZ with the external DNS and the Gateway set as the external router, it works great. This way I can can access resources in both subnets, use the DMZ connection for Internet access and still use our Windows 2000 Active Directory infrastructure on the LAN.

On the mac I cannot get it to work like this. Our internal DNS namespace is a non registered name "boomtown.com" The problem is that if I set the order in which the system tries connections so that the Airport (in the dmz) is first, then my internet work fine, but I can't use the internal DNS for resolution of any hosts in the boomtown.com domain becasue the system tries to run the DNS query against the public DNS first and ends up trying to contact the properly registered Internet Domainspace of boomtown.com.
If I set the eth interfaces to use the 10/100 first, I can't get interent access.

Is there somthing I'm missing? Is there a way to tell the computer to only use the internal DNS servers for the boomtown.com domain space and the public DNS for everything else?

[Camelot]

Why can't you set the internal DNS server on both NICs?

The DNS server doesn't have to be local, and if the Mac sees a 192.168.0.x address for the DNS server it'll use the local (wired) connection even though you're specifying that address on the other NIC.

[BkueKanoodle]

When I try that it still doesn't resolve external Names. Internal work fine.

[Scarpa]

Assuming your internal DNS server does not try to resolve any external domains, meaning it does not forward requests, you should be able to force your PB to look at the internal DNS first using NetInfo.

I have a vaguely similar setup for home use, except instead of an internal DNS server I have it set to look at my hosts file first.

You can probably find good info on Google by searching for lookupd and NetInfo. I would look into it more myself but a coworker has my PB for a couple days so I can't verify my settings. If you're still having problems next week I'll try to setup a double DNS server like you want.

EDIT: Here's a few links that discuss search orders for name resolution and how to modify them using NetInfo.

http://www.macwrite.com/criticalmass/mac-os-x-hosts.php

http://www.macwrite.com/criticalmass...-os-x-ends.php

http://www.osxfaq.com/man/8/lookupd.ws

http://www.hmug.org/man/8/lookupd.html

Those last two may be the same thing from different sites. Good luck.

[bzImage]

Setup a cache/secondary nameserver.

cache for the internet with forwarders to the DMZ dns and secondary for your internal domain.

[Camelot]

Originally posted by BkueKanoodle:
When I try that it still doesn't resolve external Names. Internal work fine.

<theory>
What happens if you enter both IP addresses in the name server box, with the internal server listed first, followed by the external server?

In this way the Mac should fall down to the secondary server if the first server doesn't respond.

Part of this depends on how the internal server is configured - if it returns a 'no such host' error the Mac may not try the secondary one, but if the internal server returns 'unknown', the Mac may try the secondary server.
</theory>

Either way the problem could be fixed by setting the internal DNS server to do forwarding, so that unknown requests are forwarded to an external server. Talk to the system admins.

[BkueKanoodle]

Originally posted by bzImage:
Setup a cache/secondary nameserver.

cache for the internet with forwarders to the DMZ dns and secondary for your internal domain.

I thought about that, but I don't want any of our internal LAN DNS info sitting in the DMZ.

[BkueKanoodle]

Originally posted by Camelot:
<theory>
Talk to the system admins.

That helps, I AM THE SYSTEM ADMIN.

Trying to fix the current situation on the DNS design ( i inherited it from the last guy), but corporate politics are slowing me down.

[BkueKanoodle]

Originally posted by BkueKanoodle:
I thought about that, but I don't want any of our internal LAN DNS info sitting in the DMZ.

Never mind, I guess I should of read your message more, I thought you were saying put a secondary DNS in the DMZ. I'll give that a shot. (I love my apple, but this was never a problem on my Windows Box )