;; WARNING: recursion requested but not available

[jfeldis]

via dig on devices other than the DNSChain server, I am seeing
;; WARNING: recursion requested but not available

I am seeing some occasional cases on my network where some commands are not getting a resolution (wget for example), unless I manually change the resolv.conf to look at 8.8.8.8 first.

Wondering if I have a config problem - shouldn't dnschain usually try 8.8.8.8 atomatically?

The error does not appear when dig is run on the dnschain server itself

---

$ dig @192.168.1.2 okturtles.org

; <<>> DiG 9.9.5-3ubuntu0.2-Ubuntu <<>> @192.168.1.2 okturtles.org
; (1 server found)
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 10678
;; flags: qr rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1
;; WARNING: recursion requested but not available

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 512
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;okturtles.org. IN A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
okturtles.org. 14399 IN A 192.184.93.146

;; Query time: 161 msec
;; SERVER: 192.168.1.2#53(192.168.1.2)
;; WHEN: Sat Jul 04 16:20:52 PDT 2015
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 58

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[taoeffect]

By default DNSChain fowards queries to Google's DNS resolvers.

Can you elaborate on the problem you're encountering? Is it just the warning or something more serious?

[jfeldis]

since adding the dnschain server, the wget command on my other linux boxes stopped being able to resolve addresses. (Ping works ok.) I was able to fix it by changing the order of nameservers in resolv.conf, putting 8.8.8.8 on top rather than bottom of the list. (I had read somewhere that wget is finicky about this). This, plus the error message i mentioned above made me wonder if my DNSChain server is not really forwarding to 8.8.8.8, and instead leaving clients to use their own alternate nameservers.

Note, that my router is set to use my internal DNSChain server for DNS, so the devices may be first asking the router, which directs them to DNSChain.

[taoeffect]

Are you sure that modifying resolve.conf fixed the problem and it wasn't just a coincidence?

I do think that the DNS library that DNSChain uses isn't perfect and I did see some occasional connection drops, which is why we recommend pairing it with PowerDNS for the time being.