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Need help fixing dns lookup...

Posted on September 9, 2016

I have an Ubuntu 14.04 droplet.

A couple of days ago I started noticing a long delay between entering a username and being prompted for password when ssh’ing in. I suspected it was related to dns lookup.

I can ping 8.8.8.8, but ping google.com results in “ping: unknown host google.com” whois, ssh & msmtp give similar results “host unknown”

I assume I’ve messed up the dns nameservers somehow. But don’t know how to fix. Appreciate any help.



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If you want to check to see what nameservers your server is using, check out the /etc/resolv.conf file. You’ll find them in the format of:

nameserver 8.8.8.8 nameserver 8.8.4.4

Feel free to change them if they aren’t working for you.

Ok… the problem seems to have fixed itself… very disconcerting… DO you doing something?

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