DNS lookup problems Mac OS X - but nslookup works!

Question

I'm having DNS lookup problems on my internal network. I'm using an internal DNS server with the ip 192.168.1.254.

If I use nslookup everything works like it should:

hawk:~ user$ nslookup publicwebserver.domain.local

Server: 192.168.1.254

Address: 192.168.1.254#53

Name: publicwebserver.domain.local

Address: 192.168.1.21

My problem is that no other program seems to be able to lookup the dns name:

hawk:~ user$ ping publicwebserver.domain.local

ping: cannot resolve publicwebserver.domain.local: Unknown host

It's like this for all command line programs and e.g. Firefox. If I fire up Network Utility, I get the same problem on the Lookup tab (probably since it uses nslookup or host on the back-end).

Has any of you seen this issue before?

Answer 1

It seems as if this is due to me pointing to both internal and external dns servers on my client, as mentioned here. After I removed all external DNS servers from my list of servers, everything works as it should.