DNS Server / Remote Desktop access

dirky

Registered
I have a couple different issues I could use some help with.

I work for a smallish retail business and have just implemented OS X Tiger Server to provide e-mail, web hosting, blog, and a few other choice services. Our current network infrastructure is not exactly the best setup. Here's the rundown:

Internet is provided by SBC via DSL with 5 static IP's. The router provided by SBC allows 5 pinholes to map public IPs to private IPs. (They set this up before I started here. The idea was to allow the owners to use Remote Desktop to connect to and control their work computers from home.) So I have one of the pinholes mapping the IP for example.com (for the sake of argument) to the private IP of the newly installed server. The server is an older iMac G4 Flat Panel unit with only one ethernet port. With this configuration, web server works fine for anyone outside the private network.

What I would like to do is set up DNS so that browsing to example.com from INSIDE our private network will point to the private IP of the server instead of the public one. Heh...actually what I would *REALLY* like to do is buy a nice new Xserve...but we can't afford it apparently. But anyway, is there any way to do this? I am a very quick learner so if someone can just point me in the right direction I'm sure I can do it, but the Server documentation is a little over my head. It's kind of like looking up the definition for a word in the dictionary and finding they have used the word itself to define it...self...er....something...

Anyway, I sure would appreciate any help y'all could provide. Boss-man is all over me to "fix" this so he doesn't have to type 192.168.1.1 to look at our web site. :cool:

THANK YOU IN ADVANCE!!!!
 
I just started with Macs too, but I've done a fair bit of DNS. You're proposing a DNS server that faces two ways, and for a small network it really isn't worth the pain. It involves quite a bit of mucking with config files. I just took a look at the interface for DNS in Server Admin and they don't even provide the possibility of doing this, as far as I can tell.

But there is a relatively easy solution! :D

Add example.com to the hosts files on all of the PCs behind the router. On OSX this is /private/etc/hosts on windows machines it's aproximately c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc . Searching is probably best. You'll need to add a line

www.example.com 192.168.1.1

I hope that helps!
 
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