How to Disable Name Servers for Troubleshooting

To simplify the troubleshooting of name resolution problems, we recommend disabling services like DNS, WINS, and DHCP. If you have name resolution problems, first configure only the host tables for your machines, then test your backups.

Some common problems you may encounter with DNS, WINS, and DHCP services

• The DNS is not configured with a reverse lookup table.

• The clients are configured with the wrong IP addresses for DNS or WINS servers.

• The DHCP services do not properly update the WINS server with new addresses.

You do not need to disable DNS for your entire network, just for the initial setup of the Backup clients and the Backup server you want to test. Only disable the ability of a client to obtain IP naming information from a DNS server. Typically, you do not need to disable the DNS server itself.

To disable the DNS server on most UNIX platforms, rename the file /etc/resolv.conf and reboot.

For a Solaris system, instead of renaming resolv.conf, you can set up the IP name search order so that the host table is searched before DNS.

To set up the IP name search order, follow these steps:

1. Edit the /etc/nsswitch.conf file and verify that the /etc/resolv.conf file exists.

2. Set the host file to be first in search order, with DNS second and NIS last.

   For example:

   hosts: files [NOTFOUND=continue] DNS [NOTFOUND=continue] nis