Dear Managers,
My original post indicated that following a weather-induced
power failure that knocked out our DNS server for an extended period,
I could not get network services like telnet and sendmail to look at
/etc/hosts. My summary indicated that I was setting up a caching
server but had not yet tested it.
I received a message from Tom Webster
<webster_at_europa.mdc.com>. Tom pointed out that a caching server might
lose data in a power failure. I was able to sneak in a test this
morning (since this is a campus, my users tend to be late risers). If
the caching server remains up, network services work even if the link
from the LAN to the rest of the Internet is cut. If the caching
server is rebooted with the link cut, network services fail (although
telnet was able to find the correct IP address, it could not perform
the reverse lookup demanded by TCP wrappers; sendmail couldn't even
find the correct IP address). So it appears Tom is
correct. Obviously I'm going to have to learn more about DNS; I put
out a order for the O'Reilly book this morning.
Tom also emphasized the need for a UPS. Our Network manager
had already submitted a request for a UPS even before the outage, but
as usual it's a matter of $$$.
Thanks for everyone's help.
Larry
Received on Wed Dec 11 1996 - 17:18:19 NZDT