[tlug] Ubuntu 14.04 bind9 local resolver problems

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Curt Sampson writes:

 > My Linux boxes at home mostly are (or were) configured to use a local
 > bind9 instance for DNS resolution. Unfortunately, sometime in the last
 > few months, this has been failing badly.

Is it only bind that is failing?  Have you tried pinging those IP
addresses when DNS resolution is failing?  bind configuration can be
pretty finicky, although I would think that "network unreachable"
would be something outside of configuration's reach.

Have you checked for bind bugs?

 > The symptom is that a lot of web sites stop working. For example, I can
 > get as far as entering my Google authentication information when trying
 > to log in to trello.com, but then the web browser (Chrome, usually) just
 > sits and spins forever, or on Firefox I appear to be logged in but don't
 > see any of my boards.

But that means that name resolution suddenly failed with "network
unreachable".  That suggests to me that there's some issue in the
kernel network stack, or more likely in communication between the
network stack and bind (bind is misinterpreting a status return?)
Again, bind bugs?

 > Before I start diving more deeply into this using network traces and
 > other inconvenient things, anybody have any clues about what might
 > be going on?

The only clue I have is "get started on those network traces". :-(
Except you could try the bind bugs, first.

Steve