Access website with same name as internal dns...

Question

Hi there
I've set up a server with internal dns zone as 'example.com' with the machine name being 'server.example.com'
Everything has been going well, but we cannot now access our externally hosted website at 'www.example.com' I now realise from looking at other posts on the web that perhaps I should have not used the same dns address internally as is used externally, but we have plans to bring mail servers in-house and so thought that this would be the correct way to go.
Can anyone offer advice on the correct way to resolve this?
Thanks

Answer 1

From what you're saying then, I need to change the DNS host name of the internal network to example.net or similar.
You can use a level within your own domain, such as server.internal.example.com, where server is the host name and internal identifies a host within your network, and example.com is a domain you own. Larger networks use this construct to identify hosts within a corporate site or a particular building, such as www.corp.example.com, www.frobnitz.example.com and www.boston.example.com.
I assume it doesn't matter if I don't own the domain example.net?
Do not use a domain that you do not have permission to use.
Only use domains you own (best), or domains that will never be activate.
It's best if you use a domain you own or a subdomain of a domain you own, or (less desirably, but functional) use a Top Level Domain (TLD) string that will never be a domain (a completely made-up domain such as server.tvkiddomain where tvkitdomain is a text string that will never match a real domain such as .COM or .NET or .BIZ or .TRAVEL or the country codes or the gazillions of these TLD strings that are coming on-line. (That there are TLDs coming on-line makes this somewhat more risky; you can end up using a domain you don't own of somebody lights up a matching TLD.)
The second parallel domain is small cost and simple, particularly as you need few or no services for it from your registrar. (When I buy domains for a site, I usually purchase several TLDs around the domain -- such as the classic big three .COM, .NET and .ORG -- and then have these available for just this sort of purpose. It's easier to buy these up front than to add them later, given the usual domain squatting that can happen. And it's not much money. And it's flexibility for later network activities, and far easier to describe and to support.)
Will the changeip command change the DNS name of machines that I've set up, so that server.example.com will be renamed server.example.net? I assume I'll need to unbind and rebind any client machines that I've bound to the server?
changeip would be the tool I'd use, yes. And I'd reconnect, yes. There's a DNS command around that flushes the DNS caches on the clients; you'll also need to clear that.
Prior to Leopard, on each DNS client:
sudo lookupd -flushcache
Leopard DNS cache flush, on each DNS client:
sudo dscacheutil -flushcache
Thanks for the pointer to the other post, was helpful, but I think that changing the internal DNS host name will be the simplest option...
IMO, the simplest option is to avoid domain name collisions and to avoid domains you don't own; to maintain the basic operations and assumptions of DNS.
Bad DNS is one of the few things you can do that can screw up other hosts and other sites on the Internet.