External DNS entries in Internal DNS

[JonathanHaddock]

Hi folks, I'm wondering if you can help me.

Background
On our network we have a webserver, accessible from the outside world. Unfortunately, the way the webpages on it (Moodle) are setup you have to specify the external addresss in its configuration or the links don't work.

What I want to do is place a record on the Internal DNS for the address, pointing it back to the Internal IP of the server.

For example (addresses faked):
moodle.bcgs.com (outside address)
would point to
moodle.bcgs.local (internal hostname, points to an Internal IP)

Current System
We're using a Windows Server 2003 network with Microsoft's DNS setup. Any changes to DNS would need to be done through this.

Question
I want to use DNS to repoint the external address (moodle.bcgs.com) to the internal IP (192.168.0.3) - how would I do this in Windows 2003's DNS?

Any help would be gratefully appreciated!

Jonathan Haddock
Network Manager
Barton Court Grammar School

 

[cajuntank]

Just create another zone in your DNS called bcgs.com and populate it with your external name records but reflect their true internal IP addresses unless the host is truely outside your network. So as an example...

If your web server is inside you network and you have a ftp server outside your network, you'll have a zone for bcgs.com that will house your host records. The

http://www record

will be the internal IP address of that host and the ftp record will be external IP address of that host.

Just remember that when you do this, and you can do this for any domain you want, you will manually have to keep those records up to date. So if you change the IP address on the inside or the ISP changes the IP address for a host on the outside, you'll have to manually change that information on those hosts in that zone.
I mention you can do this for any domain, so if there is a domain you do not want people to go to, you can create the domain in your DNS and point the records to go into la la land. As long as they are pointing to your DNS and they cannot change or you have your firewall set to only allow your DNS out via port 53, then you have a poor man's filtering.

Just out of couriosity, we too(K-12) are looking at implementing Moodle and one of my guys tried on a Windows box and didn't have much luck. I was told the Linux route was the better way to go, something to do with the PHP stuff. What did you do your install on?

 

[JonathanHaddock]

Hi cajuntank, thanks for your reply - I suspected this might be the right route.

What I don't know is what type of Zone to choose. Reading the help suggests that I don't want a "stub" zone. When I try creating a primary zone I get:

Options:
Replicate to all DNS servers in the AD domain bcgs.local
Zone name bcgs.com
Do not allow dynamic updates

The summary shows:
Name: bcgs.com
Type: Active Directory-Integrated Primary
Lookup type: Forward

I suspect it is the type that is causing the problem:

The zone cannot be created, there was a server failure

How do I create just a standard DNS zone, not an AD integrated one?

Tia,

PS: Regarding moodle, I created a Gentoo Linux server to host ours, I've messaged you with more info.


Jonathan Haddock
Network Manager
Barton Court Grammar School

 

[JonathanHaddock]

cajuntank,

Looks like there's no private messaging on this board, shame (but something I should have checked). You can email me for more info if you want?

What PHP issues did you have on your Windows server? If you want, start a new thread and leave a link here - I'll comment on the new thread.

Jonathan

Jonathan Haddock
Network Manager
Barton Court Grammar School

 

[elgrandeperro]

Check this out. I am not a windows guy, but a DNS guy and this trick SEEMS to say you can take control of one mapping (your web address) and leave the rest alone by defining it as a separate zone and giving it an A record!

Of course, I haven't verified it at all.

BTW, what you are implementing is a form of shadow zone. You don't want forwarding, it looks like a primary.

http://thesource.ofallevil.com/comm...984-9900-7c49bc3442ff&lang=en&cr=US&sloc=&p=1

 

[cajuntank]

It should be an Active directory integrated zone since you will want to replicate it throughout your AD/DNS servers.
Just take the defaults for everything else.

I'll get with you later on the moodle.

 

[ShackDaddy]

If Moodle works like other CMS and web-app systems I've worked with, you should be able to add more than one usuable alias to the configuration, so I would try adding moodle.bcgs.local to the list of valid aliases and see if that resolves the issue. I've had to do this sort of thing several times and it's a simpler configuration in the web app than it is in DNS...

Dave Shackelford
Shackelford Consulting