New MaraDNS install & New user getting Unexpected character errors on load.

Mon Aug 4 12:46:05 EDT 2008

Dear Remco:

Thanks a lot for the help. Your one suggestion was enough to help me solve
the problem.

Following your 'remove the tildes' suggestion, I tried removing the tilde's
again. Obviously I did SOMETHING wrong when I tried removing the tilde's
earlier because this time the results were different.

Here's what I saw:

myserver:/etc# /usr/sbin/maradns
 Log: Root directory changed
 Log: Binding to address 219.18.180.68, 219.18.180.69
 Log: Socket opened on UDP port 53
 Log: Root privileges dropped
Processing zone homeontherange.com. right now.
Filename: db.homeontherange.com
Error: Improper termination of label
Label must end with '.' or '%' (A '*' is allowed in csv2_default_zonefile)
Error is on line 10 in file db.homeontherange.com
context of error: ns1.mydnshost.com  (closing this file)
Error: Problem getting hostname
Error is on line 10 in file db.homeontherange.com
context of error: ns1.mydnshost.com  (closing this file)
Processing zone mydnshost.com. right now.
Filename: db.mydnshost.com
 Log: All RRs have been loaded

At this point, I looked at line 10 and realized the ns1.mydnshost.com record
there was missing a period. (I had nearly forgotten the lessons learned back
in my COBOL programming days when a 'missed period' was one of the worst
things that could happen in life) I fixed that and tried again. 

The results of the next test showed: 

myserver:/etc# /usr/sbin/maradns
 Log: Root directory changed
 Log: Binding to address 219.18.180.68, 219.18.180.69
 Log: Socket opened on UDP port 53
 Log: Root privileges dropped
Processing zone homeontherange.com. right now.
Filename: db.homeontherange.com
Warning: Authoritative NSes must be immediately after SOA
Or the first records in the zone
Otherwise, the record is ignored
Processing zone mydnshost.com. right now.
Filename: db.mydnshost.com
 Log: All RRs have been loaded

Again, I looked at the zone file and realized the ns1.mydnshost.com. record
occurred between the two NS records. So I moved the second DNS record up
above the first one so that the zone file looked like this:

# This is the sample zone file for the domain homeontherange.com.

# We have two records which handle the serving of web pages.  These
# are simple name-to-ip translations.  In other words, we have one
# record which states "The IP for homeontherange.com. is 219.18.180.68" and
# another that states "The IP for www.homeontherange.com. is 219.18.180.68"
# example.com. 10.10.10.12 ~

homeontherange.com. NS ns1.mydnshost.com.
homeontherange.com. NS ns2.mydnshost.com.
ns1.mydnshost.com. 219.18.180.68
ns2.mydnshost.com. 219.18.180.69
homeontherange.com. 219.18.180.68
www.homeontherange.com. 219.18.180.68
homeontherange.com. MX 10 mail1.homeontherange.com.
mail1.homeontherange.com. 219.18.180.68

And then I ran the test again.

This time, it seems to have worked. What I see now, is:

myserver:/etc# /usr/sbin/maradns
 Log: Root directory changed
 Log: Binding to address 219.18.180.68, 219.18.180.69
 Log: Socket opened on UDP port 53
 Log: Root privileges dropped
Processing zone homeontherange.com. right now.
Filename: db.homeontherange.com
Processing zone mydnshost.com. right now.
Filename: db.mydnshost.com
 Log: All RRs have been loaded

Hurray! Thank You, Remco. You ARE a genius! I see what happened. I obviously
wasn't able to 'guess' how to set-up the mararc and zone files but my Debian
release didn't seem to include the full docs and tutorials. So, I went to
the MaraDNS site and followed the tutorials there. It never dawned on me the
version I was following the tutorial for would include config file format
changes that might not be backward compatible to the version I was actually
INSTALLING. Duhhh!

NOW that it's running from the command prompt, I'll try to figure out how to
run it as a background process and how to test it to confirm that it's
working otherwise.

Is there any possibility you can answer the other two questions I asked in
my original message?

1st Question: The server has two IP addresses; but it clearly has just 1
mararc file and 1 maradns directory. The maradns directory is empty except
for two zone files and the original sample mararc file (which is unused).
The mararc file that IS being used is /etc/mararc. Should we be running TWO
copies of maradns to serve the two IP addresses involved? Or, since both
IP's are served by the same hardware and software is one running copy of
maradns enough? I'm assuming one copy is enough.

2nd Question: ANSWERED! :-)

3rd Question: WHY is maradns processing the homeontherange zone file BEFORE
it processes the mydnshost.com file? That's not the order they're defined in
in mararc.

Thanks,
Greg

-----Original Message-----
From: list-bounces at maradns.org [mailto:list-bounces at maradns.org] On Behalf
Of Remco Rijnders
Sent: Monday, August 04, 2008 9:58 AM
To: gregplatt at ix.netcom.com
Cc: list at maradns.org
Subject: RE: New MaraDNS install & New user getting Unexpected character
errors on load.

> Sorry, I realized shortly after I'd sent it that I'd left out that info as
> well as linux and apache details. I was reposting it to the list when your
> follow-up question arrived. Here's what I said:
>
> I'm running
>
> Debian v4.0r3 (etch)
>
> Linux v 2.6.18-6-686
>
> Apache v2.2.3
>
> Maradns v1.2.12.04-1etch2
>
> I'm trying to figure out what patches have been applied to v1.2.12.04 the
> "1etch2" suffix to the name does, I believe, indicate that some patches
> released AFTER the original v1.2.12 version have been applied to Maradns
> since the original February 08 release of Debian 4.0r3; but I'm not sure
> how
> to determine exactly WHAT patches have been applied.

I do not have my "play" maradns server at hand at the moment to try this
on, but I think the problem might be related to your records all ending in
" ~". Tilde handling was only introduced in maradns v1.3 and I'm not sure
how the 1.2 parser likes it. Looking at the zone files you posted, I think
you can safely leave off the ~ at the end of each line. Can you try and
see it that makes a difference?

Remco