Jaguar won't resolve domain names via DHCP

J

jodie

Registered
Hey everyone,

I have just taken a part-time mac technician role for an adult education college in London. I am looking after one room of old emacs (v 2.0) connected via ethernet. The college does not have the budget for a mac server so therefore the emacs are currently leasing their IP addresses through DHCP settings via the main college's PC network.

The emacs were running OS9.2 when I first started and I thought it would be good to run OSX with Classic (version OS10.2.2) since it was already installed on the emacs.

The problem I'm having is that the first machine (my test machine) I tried this on is unable to connect to the Internet, the error message being 'Specified server not found'. These are the steps I have taken to try and fix the problem:

- Got the college's PC support team out to check ports, IP's etc. They said the IP address was fine and everything looked ok. They typed in Google's IP address and it bought up the home page ok to my suprise but wouldn't resolve www.google.com or any other domain names. They said it was a DHCP issue and probably something specific to OSX and left it at that

- Wiped the machine completely and reinstalled only OSX plus updated it with the combo updater from apple.com to take it to OS10.2.8 (same error message) and without OS9

- Got a static IP address so I could test whether the emac could resolve a name that way and it worked.

Seems like it just doesn't like getting it's IP via DHCP. Can anyone help pls? The emac is bare of any 3rd party programs and I haven't even installed any apps on it yet. I really don't know what's going on. Aaarrghhh...

Thanks in advance!

Jodie
 
Try entering the DNS addresses manually.

Go to the Network preferences screen via the system preferences window.

Click the TCP/IP tab

Enter your DNS Server addresses.
 
The original Jaguar (10.2.0) had some DHCP problems (on some machines). They issued fixes in one of the point updates. You would probably have much better luck with the Mac OS X 10.2.8 Combined Update. The Combo Update will jump the computers to the latest/last point upgrade for Jaguar.
 
OSX including Panther cannot or do not get DNS server information via dhcp even when it is included in the configuration file and Windows based machines do get it so you will have to enter your DNS server addresses manually.
 
Hey everyone,

Thanks for the replies. I have already installed the combo dater so I tried the manual DNS settings advice and got them from the PC guys that maintain the main servers etc here. I put them in the DNS servers textfield in 'Network' in the System Preferences but still got the same message about 'specified server not found'. They gave me 4 just in case the first few were busy (I think that was the word they used).

Anyone else got any ideas I can give a go?

Thanks

Jodie
 
You could try using Applications>Utilities>network utility and see if you get a look up that way to resolve a name. As long as you entered the dns server IP addresses it should work though.

Do you use a proxy server ?
 
Hey everyone,

I have just taken a part-time mac technician role for an adult education college in London. I am looking after one room of old emacs (v 2.0) connected via ethernet. The college does not have the budget for a mac server so therefore the emacs are currently leasing their IP addresses through DHCP settings via the main college's PC network.

The emacs were running OS9.2 when I first started and I thought it would be good to run OSX with Classic (version OS10.2.2) since it was already installed on the emacs.

The problem I'm having is that the first machine (my test machine) I tried this on is unable to connect to the Internet, the error message being 'Specified server not found'. These are the steps I have taken to try and fix the problem:

- Got the college's PC support team out to check ports, IP's etc. They said the IP address was fine and everything looked ok. They typed in Google's IP address and it bought up the home page ok to my suprise but wouldn't resolve www.google.com or any other domain names. They said it was a DHCP issue and probably something specific to OSX and left it at that

- Wiped the machine completely and reinstalled only OSX plus updated it with the combo updater from apple.com to take it to OS10.2.8 (same error message) and without OS9

- Got a static IP address so I could test whether the emac could resolve a name that way and it worked.

Seems like it just doesn't like getting it's IP via DHCP. Can anyone help pls? The emac is bare of any 3rd party programs and I haven't even installed any apps on it yet. I really don't know what's going on. Aaarrghhh...

Thanks in advance!

Jodie
 
Macs don't pick up the DNS entries when they are assigned their addresses via dhcp. You have to enter the IP addresses of the DNS servers and also your prefered fully qualified domain names for the DNS search order then all should be fine.
 
Hi Tommo,

I have entered the four DNS servers that IT admin gave me in the order they recommended and it's still not working. But I'm not sure what you mean about the 'preferred fully qualified domain names'.
 
In the entry for search domains, assuming the college network is Window based and running Windows 2000 or above you need to enter the fully qualified domain name. That is <domain name.forest name> rather than just domain name. So if your domain is called Apple and the forest name is orchrd.com you would enter apple.orchard.com.

The IT department should be able to tell you what this is. Sorry if this is not very clear or I am explaining something you already know. This setting has to be entered for any of the Macs I have to work correctly.

A thought though, does this only effect web browsing ? If so it maybe that you are running through a prxoy server and you will need to enter details of that. You can check this by running Applications>Netwotk Utility. On the lookup tab enter an IP Address of a machine that you know the DNS entry for and see if it returns it. If it does then a proxy problem would be my guess.
 
Hey everyone,

Thanks for your replies. I have shown someone in IT administration for the campus this forum thread (particularly Tommo and Char's replies above) and he has agreed to help me out today or tomorrow. I have a feeling something else is going on in the room network port wise as although the test machine I have been using for this forum is picking up a 172 etc address, others that aren't working in OS9 have only a 169 address so that's no good.

Hopefully I can demonstrate to IT that I have tried a thousand different things to get the system going and they will be more willing to help and to investigate their side of it.

Thanks again,

Jodie
 
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