Mac & Windows VPN

[The Dude]

Any Mac users succesfully used VPN to access a Windows network? Been trying to set it up today to connect to the office. Can get a connection to the intranet OK using it's IP address but then any links off the main page don't resolve properly (tries to connect to Google.com).

We do have a DNS server for this purpose so I set it in the DNS box on TCP/IP page for the VPN connection but to no avail.

This is using Firefox. It doesn't work at all with Safari, for some reason.

[aldi]

Can you ping the DNS server & use 'nslookup dnsserverip' sucesfully?

[The Dude]

aldi said:

Can you ping the DNS server & use 'nslookup dnsserverip' sucesfully?

Could ping the DNS box but not tried the nslookup command.

In any case, our sys admin seemed to have solved it last night (though it seems a bit Heath Robinson to me) - he emailed the "hosts" file from the work servers to copy and paste into my own private/etc/hosts. After some fiddling changing file permissions and getting Finder to reveal the normally hidden-from-the-GUI files, it has had the desired result.

Thanks anyway aldi (actually I'll try the nslookup as I'm curious).

[aldi]

nslookup is quite cool, assuming the syntax on mac is the same as linux just 'nslookup [servername]' will bring back the IP for the servername using the systems allready configured DNS servers. But the cool bit is you can do 'nslookup [servername] [dnsserver]' and it will try and use any dns server you specify to resolve, and sometimes give a meaningful error. i.e. if you can ping the box but nslookup tells you it cant connect then its probably the wrong server. Glad you got it sorted anyway!

[zumbruk]

aldi said:

nslookup is quite cool, assuming the syntax on mac is the same as linux just 'nslookup [servername]' will bring back the IP for the servername using the systems allready configured DNS servers. But the cool bit is you can do 'nslookup [servername] [dnsserver]' and it will try and use any dns server you specify to resolve, and sometimes give a meaningful error. i.e. if you can ping the box but nslookup tells you it cant connect then its probably the wrong server. Glad you got it sorted anyway!

Beware of placing too much trust in "nslookup". For one thing, it's deprecated on some systems (I think it's DeadRat that warns you about using it), and for another, it doesn't use the same name resolution code as the system it's running on. So, it'll tell you that your DNS server is working, but not whether the hosts sytem can successfully resolve names. (I hope that makes sense...)

[The Dude]

As zumbruk said, nslookup has been deprecated on OS X but it still works - a handy little message suggests using "dig" or "hosts" instead.

And, as aldi predicted, it fails to retrieve anything useful from the office DNS server.

I'll have words, obviously something not quite right.

[aldi]

zumbruk said:

Beware of placing too much trust in "nslookup". For one thing, it's deprecated on some systems (I think it's DeadRat that warns you about using it), and for another, it doesn't use the same name resolution code as the system it's running on. So, it'll tell you that your DNS server is working, but not whether the hosts sytem can successfully resolve names. (I hope that makes sense...)

Cheers, really should start using dig I suppose... I like nslookup cause it works on windows too

Dude, forgot to mention, could be a firewall issue also? Sure your guy will sort it...