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Incorrect name resolution to 1.0.0.0 in Debian Lenny while using DSL 502-T ADSL router August 9, 2009

Posted by razasayed in Hacks.
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I was facing a strange problem in Lenny, wherein any websites i tried to access  from the console were resolving to 1.0.0.0 .Because of this apt-get update was not working . Also, other applications requiring network functionality like the x-chat irc client were not working .

So, i did a lil bit of googling, and found that this had something to do with the handling of IPv6 packets by the DSL-502T adsl router which i use for my MTNL Triband service. Im not sure whether this was a problem with my adsl router,but what was happening was that the name resolution requests were going to my adsl router (192.168.1.1), as it was the nameserver specified in /etc/resolv.conf, and it was incorrectly returning 1.0.0.0 as the ip.

A temporary workaround i did was hardcoding the ip address of my repos listed in /etc/apt/sources.list and the irc servers, in /etc/hosts.

However, luckily enough i discovered a permanent solution , which would work for any website henceforth, and that was to use the free service OpenDNS .  Quoting Wikipedia , “OpenDNS offers DNS resolution for consumers and businesses as an alternative to using their Internet service provider’s DNS servers” .  What this means is , i could use the DNS severs provided by OpenDNS instead of passing the name resolution requests to my adsl router at 192.168.1.1.

OpenDNS provides two DNS servers 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220 . To use them i did the following.

Step 1) In  /etc/dhcp3/dhclient.conf , i uncommented and replaced

# prepend domain-name-servers 127.0.0.1;

with

prepend domain-name-servers 208.67.222.222,208.67.220.220;

Step 2) Reboot
After reboot, i could see those nameservers added to my  /etc/resolv.conf as well . To confirm, i was using OpenDNS , i visited http://www.opendns.com/welcome .

Another thing,if you are facing issues with browsing websites in Firefox or Iceweasel, then from about:config just set network.dns.disableIPv6 to true and restart the browser.

If you still face any issues you can refer to http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/409

Hope this helps any Lenny users out there who might be facing the same problem .

Till the next post,
Adios 🙂