Re: resolv.conf wrongly gets Belkin router's address

Kent West wrote:
I replaced a dead router the other day with a new Belkin F5D7230-4
wireless/4-port unit.

First let me say that I am not familiar with that particular piece of
hardware.

When networking starts on my Etch box, /etc/resolv.conf gets rewritten
like so:

search hydroplatenet
nameserver 192.168.2.1
nameserver 208.180.42.68
nameserver 208.180.42.100

I assume this interface is configured using DHCP? Are you using
'resolvconf'? What is in your /etc/network/interfaces file for that
interface?

Web browsing (and other name-dependent Intarweb Pipes stuff) is very
slow with these settings, but if I comment/remove the first nameserver
line, which is the address of the Belkin router, things are fine.

Some routers proxy DNS information through themselves. On the boxes I
have seen that do this it is configurable and can be turned off. It
appears to me from reading your report that the Belkin box has offered
its own address as a DNS server in addition to some upstream DNS
server.

Inspect the Belkin client DNS configuration and see if that address
has been added to the configuration or if there is a way to remove
that configuration. On consumer routers I have worked with it has
always been possible to specially add in a set of DNS addresses to
provide to DHCP clients, by default empty. Hopefully in your case
these can be removed specifically. Although it is a terrible thing
that it came out-of-the-box with a bad configuration.

I found a couple of other people with similar problems
(http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=297834 and
http://www.mepis.org/node/3221), one of which provided the kludgey fix
of pre-pending the good addresses via /etc/dhcp3/dhclient.conf to force
duplicates of the good address to the top of the file, but that's just ugly.

And you could also completely override the dns addresses provided by
dhcp or you could move to static addresses. In both cases you are not
getting good use out of the box.

I've sent this problem to Belkin, and their tech support responded that
"The Belkin Router only provides a Gateway address but is not a DNS
server"

Then why did it offer itself as one through DHCP? That could be a
confirmation of a bug.

(http://www.belkin.com/contact/milan/default1.aspx?id=5B5B5956095F560D0D5C5F0E5B0A5D56305F5E).

Note: That web url has expired.

They indicated that I should call them on the phone (I hate dealing with
stuff over the phone...), but I wanted to get all my ducks in a row
before I do so.

If they hear Debian GNU/Linux they will probably drop your support
call immediately too. Sigh. It would be useful to crosscheck this
with tests from other operating system clients. If they all behave
the same then you have confirmation. If they behave different then
that is also useful information.

Is Debian somehow responsible for incorrectly seeing this "Gateway
address" as a name server address (and if so, how do I fix it), or is
the Belkin tech supporter incorrect about his product (or some other
option)?

When you say Debian here you really should say dhcp3 client or pump or
other specific dhcp client that you have installed. If you don't know
then you are probably using dhcp3. Debian just bundles it up for you.

I believe that the Belkin DHCP server is offering itself as a DNS
server inappropriately. Yours is not the only report of the problem.
It may be possible correct the bad configuration by explicit
configuration of the box to avoid this.

Commodity routers such as those are inexpensive. Return yours and buy
a different brand that works correctly and avoid the problem.

Bob


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