DNS on SuSe Linux

I recently installed SuSe Linux 8.0 professional on an old computer I had. It's my first time using linux. I have a home network with 3 windows computers, a router, and now this computer. I can get to the other computers on my network now, but I have no DNS. I can go to websites by their IP adress, but not by name. I don't know what I'm supposed to put in the host name, domain name, name server, and domain search list fields in the network card configuration, so I figure that's the problem. Can anyone help me out?

first step youngin, I'd say get a newer version of SUSE if you can do so. 8.0 is no longer supported at all so you might want to upgrade that. Next, what did you install? SUSE by default is made to be as painless as possible which is why I do custom installs to get everything I want on there, so you may want to use YAST and install things for DNS.

I installed the standard package without star office, with a few exceptions. I included some packages I knew I'd want later like nmap, ethereal, and snort. I had to get 8.0 because the computer I'm running it on doesn't have enough RAM for 9.X

Simple question - what are the other computers using for a DNS server?

Assuming the YAST screen for SuSE 8.0 looks something like this... http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/sl...e=145&slide=44 ...you want to put the IP address of the DNS server your other machines are using into the field "Name Server 1"

I am _not_ suggesting you fill in the fields or check boxes as shown in the slide.

Alternatively you could run nslookup (using one of your other PCs) on the name of the website you intend to browse to and put the info into /etc/hosts. You probably don't what to do this ;-)

And I know what you mean about SuSE 9 wanting more RAM than SuSE 8 (with a default installation)!

Yep, that's exactly what I needed. Thanks a ton! :D

For further reference, Linux stores DNS information in a file called /etc/resolv.conf . A typical resolv.conf looks something like this:

Quote:

---

#comments go here...
nameserver 111.111.111.111
nameserver 222.222.222.222

---

Cheers,
cgkanchi

Ah yes.... but be careful editing things like resolv.conf in SuSE. Running SuSEconfig (which Yast will do from time to time) will possibly write over those changes.

If you edit resolve.conf for example, you might want to take note of a few lines in /etc/sysconfig/network/config:

Code:

---

# There are some services (ppp, ippp, dhcp-client, pcmcia, hotplug) that have to
# change the /etc/resolv.conf dynamically at certain times.  E.g. if ppp/ippp
# establishes a connection and is supplied by the peer with a list of
# nameservers. Or pcmcia needs to set the correct nameserver for the choosen
# configuration scheme. If you don't like these services to change
# /etc/resolv.conf at all, then set this variable to "no".
# If unsure, leave it at the default (which is "yes").
#
MODIFY_RESOLV_CONF_DYNAMICALLY="yes"

---

If you can, try to change .conf files by using options in the files in /etc/sysconfig - once you get in the habit of doing this, life becomes much easier (especially if using a number of machines).