Secondary Name Server returns "No address associated with hostname"

[sproggit]

I'm 99% certain that the root cause here is "idiot user"... but for the life of me I can't figure out where I'm going wrong. I'd be grateful for solutions or triage suggestions please.

I'm trying to set up a Primary/Secondary pair of Technitium DNS, running on a pair of Raspberry Pi 4B machines. So far, I have been able to:-

• Install and Configure the core software on both Primary and Secondary servers
• Create a Primary Zone on the Primary Server and populate it with my local network's A Records [approx 55 in number]
• Install an NS record on the Primary node that points to the Secondary server
• Configure the Secondary server as a "Secondary" and get replication up and running
• Add and remove A records on the Primary and see the changes replicate across to the Secondary

Everything seems to be working perfectly, except...

Any time that I try to access the Secondary Name Server by it's DNS entry, I get "Could not resolve hostname" and "No address associated with hostname"

My primary DNS Server is "tom.mydomain.net" and my secondary DNS Server is "jerry.mydomain.net".

On my Primary, I have the following records:-

@ / NS / Name Server: tom
@ / SOA / Primary Name Server: tom
jerry / NS / Name Server: jerry.mydomain.net / Glue Addresses: 172.16.200.2
jerry / A / 172.16.200.2

On my Secondary, with replication up and running, I have the following records:-

@ / NS / Name Server: tom
@ / SOA / Primary Name Server: tom
jerry / NS / Name Server: jerry.mydomain.net
jerry / A / 172.16.200.2

I have 56 defined A records in "mydomain.net", so it's not too difficult to work through them using "ping" on a workstation to test each record. 55 out of the 56 respond successfully, only "jerry" fails to respond - which is why I think the issue is "idiot user" and not Technitium.

In addition to testing the remainder of my local A records, I've also configured forwarding to Cloudflare DOH - which works perfectly. I've also configured in 7 blocklists which I rolled over from my PiHole setup - and they seem to work just fine, too.

There's one more oddity here. If I try "ping jerry.mydomain.net" on "tom" [Primary DNS Server] or my local workstation, then I get
"ping: jerry.mydomain.net: Name or service not known"

But if I try the same thing on the actual host, "Jerry", then I get
"ping: jerry.mydomain.net: No address associated with the hostname"

I would be extremely grateful if anyone can suggest what I might have done wrong, or recommend places I might start to check to triage for issues.

Thanks in advance

[sproggit]

I'm not sure if this helps triage, but when I use the DNS Client function in the web admin panels and search for "jerry.mydomain.net" as a Type A record, I get the following [partially shown] Response returned:

"Question": [
{
"Name": "jerry.mydomain.net",
"Type": "A",
"Class": "IN"
}
],
"Answer": [],
"Authority": [],
"Additional": [

As you can see the value of "Answer" is empty - while for all other hosts in my local Zone, that field is populated with the correct details.

[sproggit]

OK, with a lot of patience and a bit of Google-Fu, I've managed to answer my own question:

Yes, the problem was "idiot user".

On the Primary DNS Server for the Zone, I had created an NS and an A record for the Secondary DNS Server, but in the "Name" field in the NS record, I had put the hostname - in my case "jerry", as my primary and secondary DNS servers are "tom" and "jerry" - instead of simply '@'.

When I replaced "jerry" with "@" and re-tested, I got the results I was looking for.

Right now, I'm off to make some edits to my documentation!

[ShreyasZare]

Good to know you figured it out. When you create NS with a subdomain name then it means that you are delegating the subdomain name to another name server and thus any record with same name will not resolve.