rlogin, rsh, and ftp Problems

Symptoms

• Users are asked for password when they try to rlogin to a machine in another domain over the Internet.

• Users are denied access when they try to ftp to a machine in another domain over the Internet.

• Users are denied access when they try to use rlogin or rsh to a machine on their own network.

Possible causes

• The user is working at a machine that does not have a PTR record in the master server's hosts.rev file.

• A missing or incorrect delegation of a subdomain in the hosts.rev file.

Diagnosis and solution

Check the appropriate hosts.rev file and make sure there is a PTR record for the user's machine. For example, if the user is working at the machine altair.doc.com with an IP address of 192.168.0.1, the doc.com master server's doc.rev file should have an entry like:

46 	IN	 PTR 	altair.doc.com.

If the record is missing, add it to the hosts.rev file and then reboot the server or reload its data as explained in How to Force in.named to Reload DNS Data.

Check and correct the NS entries in the hosts.rev files and then reboot the server or reload its data as explained in How to Force in.named to Reload DNS Data.

Other DNS Syntax Errors

Symptoms

Error messages in console or syslog with operative phrases like the following are most often caused by syntax errors in DNS data and configuration files.

• No such...

• Unknown field...

• Non-authoritative answer:

• Database format error...

• illegal or (illegal)

• error receiving zone transfer

Check the relevant files for spelling and syntax errors.

A common syntax error is misuse of the trailing dot in domain names (either using the dot when you should not, or not using it when you should). See Setting Up DNS Servers.