OpenDNS not working with work web mail

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  • Avatar
    rotblitz

    Did you see that the OpenDNS message is about gro.mail.dealertrack.com, not about mail.dealertrack.com?

    Well, for me this domain gro.mail.dealertrack.com resolves fine, and CacheCheck at http://www.opendns.com/support/cache/ returns the same valid IP address 65.75.51.12 for each location. But the domain mail.dealertrack.com indeed returns SERVFAIL redirection when using OpenDNS, also for CacheCheck. Not for some other DNS services I tried.

    Would you know how you came up with gro.mail.dealertrack.com, not with mail.dealertrack.com as you said above?

    As an immediate temporary workaround I can see the following options:

    Either way, open a support ticket with OpenDNS, because this seems to be a problem with OpenDNS. I couldn't see any problems with dealertrack.com's authoritative DNS.

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    rotblitz

    Oops, just tried again, and it works now.

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    rotblitz

    Nope, it works with 208.67.220.220 only, still not with 208.67.222.222, and also not always with others, just randomly.
    I think I found the problem:

    dealertrack.com.        172800  IN      NS      dns1.carbook.com.
    dealertrack.com.        172800  IN      NS      dns2.carbook.com.
    ;; Received 116 bytes from 192.5.6.30#53(a.gtld-servers.net) in 156 ms

    mail.dealertrack.com.   30      IN      A       69.74.57.39
    mail.dealertrack.com.   900     IN      NS      dns1.carbook.com.mail.dealertrack.com.
    ;; Received 85 bytes from 74.200.96.15#53(dns1.carbook.com) in 125 ms

    mail.dealertrack.com has an A record and an NS record. This is nonsense. They must remove the NS record from their DNS configuration. And they should increase the very short TTL of 1 minute for the A record unless the mail server is behind a dynamic IP address.

    You don't need to open a ticket for OpenDNS. And you should apply the temporary fix with the hosts file.

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    jayf99

    So i should temporarily add ..

    69.74.57.39  mail.dealertrack.com

    to the hosts file on my local box

     

    and in the mean time tell dealertrack to remove the NS records (whatever that means) for mail.dealertrack.com from their own domain name server.

    Do I have that right?

    And thanks very much for the quick help and reply.

     - J

     

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    rotblitz

    Yes.

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    jayf99

    Thanks.

    That worked last night, but not tonight. When I ping mail.dealertrack.com now I get a different ip address.

    Anyway, supposedly the MS Exchange crew at HQ are going to make some fixes in their DNS tonight and hopefully include the one you suggested. I will let you know the outcome.

     

    Thanks again

     - J

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    rotblitz

    Don't ping.  Ping is good for nothing in this context. E.g. ping also uses your hosts file with priority, whatever you have entered there.  Use nslookup, dig, host & Co only to troubleshoot DNS.

    For me the IP address is still the same, from around 5 DNS services I queried.

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  • Avatar
    jayf99

    Well, I haven't been able to get any information out those IT guys as to what, if anything, they did to their DNS. nslookup still has mail.dealertrack.com at 69.74.57.39 but if i leave that entry in my hosts file the web page times out. If I comment out that line in my hosts file I can then get the login page at https://mail.dealertrack.com, but then when I enter my username and password and try to log in, it goes to https://gro.mail.dealertrack.com and I get the same error web page from OpenDNS. I tried making an entry for gro.mail.dealertrack.com in the hosts file as well but that didn't work either.

     

    I'm sorry to be a pain but can you tell if they made any changes to their DNS?

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  • Avatar
    rotblitz

    How can anybody else know if they made a change to their DNS?  They still have an A and an NS record for both, mail.dealertrack.com and gro.mail.dealertrack.com.

    You can enhance your hosts file as follows until they corrected their DNS:

    69.74.57.39  mail.dealertrack.com
    65.75.51.12  gro.mail.dealertrack.com

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    maintenance
    omg formatting wut?
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    rotblitz

    Unfortunately, none of these analytics shows clearly the root cause of the problem.  I found out by the following commands:

    dig +trace mail.dealertrack.com
    dig +trace gro.mail.dealertrack.com

    Domain name mail.dealertrack.com has an A and an NS record, the latter with an invalid nameserver as target.  A and NS record for the same domain name doesn't make sense and is normally not possible.  The domain owner is to remove the NS record, and everything will work, else there is random selection of either the A or the NS record.

    mail.dealertrack.com.   900     IN      A       69.74.57.39
    mail.dealertrack.com.   900     IN      NS      dns1.carbook.com.mail.dealertrack.com.

    gro.mail.dealertrack.com. 900   IN      A       65.75.51.12
    mail.dealertrack.com.   900     IN      NS      dns1.carbook.com.mail.dealertrack.com.

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    jayf99

    Thanks both of you.

    Well whatever you can tell it's much more than I can. I don't have that dig program on my windows 8 box, is that a unix command or some third party program?

    Funny, when I put the entry for mail.dealertrack.com into my hosts file that site times out. The only way the whole thing works is if I only put in the entry for gro.mail.dealertrack.com and not mail.dealertrack.com.

     

    I finally got an email address of the corporate MS Exchange group so I will send them this info and see what they say.

     

    Thanks again

     - J

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    rotblitz

    "I don't have that dig program on my windows 8 box, is that a unix command or some third party program?"

    This is originally a Linux/UNIX program, but there are Windows versions around.
    https://startpage.com/do/search?q=dig+for+windows

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