dig not working in a virtual host environment

Question

I have installed three virtual machines (RHEL 6) on virtualbox, and attached a bridged mode network to all machines

i have to use my first machine to be a DNS and the second and third machine should get their ip from the DNS (i dont need DHCP). is it possible?

i have installed bind in my first machine and added the following in named.conf

options {
         listen-on port 53 { 127.0.0.1; 192.168.0.254; };
         listen-on-v6 port 53 { ::1;};
         directory "/var/named";
         dump-file "/var/named/data/cache_dumb.db";
         statistics-file "/var/named/data/named_stats.txt";
         memstatistics-file "/var/named/data/named_mem_stats.txt";
         allow-query { localhost; };
         recursion yes;
         dnssec-enable yes;
         dnssec-validation yes;
         dnssec-lookaside auto;
         bindkeys-file "/etc/named.iscdlv.key";
};

logging {
        channel default_debug {
        file "data/named.run";
        severity dynamic;
        };
};
zone "." IN {
         type hint;
         file "named.ca";
};
include "/etc/named.rfc1912.zone";

zone "example.com" IN {
         type master;
         file "example.com.zone";
         allow-update { none; };
};

i have added following to the /var/named/example.com.zone

$ORIGIN example.com.
$TTL 1D
@             IN    SOA    instructor.example.com. root.example.com. (
                    201408181847   ; serial number
                    6H             ;refersh after 6 hour
                    1H             ;retry after 1 hour
                    1W             ;expire after 1 week
                    1D)            ; minimum TTL of 1 day
;
;
              IN    NS    instructor.example.com.
              IN    NS    desktop1.example.com.
              IN    NS    desktop2.example.com.
instructor    IN    A    192.168.0.254
desktop1      IN    A    192.168.0.1
desktop2      IN    A    192.168.0.2
;
;
@             IN    MX 10 mail.example.com.
mail          IN    A    192.168.0.253
;
;

after that i checked using named-checkconf and no error were returned then i started named service

service named start
chkconfig named on

after that i configured my ip in device configuration as

static IP 192.168.0.254
Netmask   255.255.255.0
Default gateway 192.168.0.254
primary DNS     192.168.0.254

and DNS configuration as

hostname istructor.example.com
primary DNS 192.168.0.254
DNS search path   example.com

and restarted the network i could dig all hosts from this machine

then i logged on to second machine (first machine still running) and set ip in device configuration as

static IP 192.168.0.1
Netmask   255.255.255.0
Default gateway 192.168.0.254
primary DNS     192.168.0.254

and DNS configuration as

hostname desktop1.example.com
primary DNS 192.168.0.254
DNS search path   example.com

and restarted network now when i dig desktop1.example.com i got the error

; <<>> DiG 9.7.3-P3-RedHat-9.7.3-8.P3.e16 <<>> desktop1.example.com
;; global options: +cmd
;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached

what could be the problem...

please help thanks in advance

Answer 1

From second machine, try this:

ping 192.168.0.254

Do you get a response? If not, basic networking is not working.

Answer 2

Ya its pinging... I sorted out the problem.. It was the iptables making the problem... I added
-A INPUT -p tcp -m state --state NEW --dport 53 -j ACCEPT

-A INPUT -p udp -m state --state NEW --dport 53 -j ACCEPT

And reatarted iptables.

Now its working like a charm.. :)