SLES 11 DNS not allowing access to external sites to clients other than itself

This document (7003852) is provided subject to the disclaimer at the end of this document.

Environment

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11
bind
named

Situation

When configuring a new SLES 11 DNS server, customer could query for records in zones that the server was authoritative for, but could not query for records in zones external to the server. However, he could perform these same queries from the SLES 11 DNS server itself.
Forwarder and Root Servers were fine.
Packet traces revealed the server was refusing the query.

Resolution

By default, SLES 11 DNS does not allow recursive queries for anyone other than the server itself, and so was denying queries from clients for external zones. To allow these queries depends on how you configured DNS.
If you use Yast: Yast -> DNS Server -> Basic Options -> Option -> allow-query. Add in IP addresses and subnets you want to allow in the following format: { 1.2.3.4; 1.2.0.0/16; };
If you edit /etc/namd.conf directly, follow the example in the named.conf (same syntax for the values).

NOTE: Do NOT forget to add the server itself if it isn't included in a subnet you would add. The reason is that once you define the allow-query option, everything else (including the server) is refused.

Disclaimer

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