Unable to access anything (?) by hostname

[Octopuss]

I have a server running ESXi 6.7 that houses a vCenter management, TrueNAS, (Ubuntu) seedbox, and until today pfSense VMs.
I have finally installed the pfSense box and shut the VM down, and changed the network a bit during the process.
The entire LAN is still the same: 192.168.0.1/22 (yes I do want it like that), domain is set to "lan" (in the general settings, nowhere else).

The IPs changed like so:
server: 192.168.2.1 -> 192.168.0.3 (was previously static to IP), hostname "ESXi"
vCenter: 192.168.2.3 -> 192.168.0.4, hostname "vCenter"
NAS: 192.168.2.5 -> 192.168.0.7, hostname "skladiste"
seedbox 192.168.2.6 -> 192.168.0.8, hostname "seedbox"
With the exception of the server itself, everything was already set to static DHCP mapping before, I only changed the IPs.
switch has static IP 192.168.0.2/22

Now it's all messed up. Or well, everything that is related to the damn server, or so it seems.
Hostnames just don't work. IPs do.
The only thing I can ping by hostname is pfSense itself. It's even recognized without using the ".lan"
Ok, I can ping my own pc by hostname as well, but it responds with IPv6 address, but I have that disabled in Windows. I don't get that either.

When I try to access the vCenter by IP, I get as far as this

but when I click on the first option, the page times out, because it redirects to "vcenter.lan".

TrueNAS is even weirder.
It works fine by IP, but hostname doesn't work, and I can ping the VM by hostname, only it looks like this:

I have no idea where the local domain came from. "skladiste.lan" doesn't work. I never set "local" anywhere, and I never touched network configuration of any device in the network manually, everything was/is automatically getting IP from DHCP.

Accessing Webmin on the seedbox, again, only works by IP.

Someone said I should try switching back to the deprecated DHCP tech, but that didn't change anything. I did reboo pfSense and the switch both after doing so.

I know very, very little about networking, and this is something I am absolutely unable to troubleshoot.
Can anyone think of anything?

[johnpoz]

@Octopuss said in Unable to access anything (?) by hostname:

domain is set to "lan" (in the general settings, nowhere else).

Why would you not use the default home.arpa which is a special use domain designed for exactly what your wanting to do.. Or the new one is prob going to be .internal

But for something to resolve it has to be fully qualified and the dns your asking has to have a record..

What did you call pfsense, pfsense? Can you resolve pfsense.lan ?

do ping whateveryoucalledpfsense.lan

Example I use sg4860 with the home.arpa domain.

$ ping sg4860.home.arpa

Pinging sg4860.home.arpa [192.168.9.253] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.168.9.253: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=64

my other devices resolve as well..

$ dig nas.home.arpa +short
192.168.9.10

$ dig uc.home.arpa +short
192.168.2.13

$ dig uap-ac-pro.home.arpa +short
192.168.2.2

$ dig brother.home.arpa +short
192.168.2.50

Your on windows, what gets returned when you just do a nslookup

$ nslookup
Default Server:  sg4860.home.arpa
Address:  192.168.9.253

This will show that your dns is pointed to pfsense for dns (unbound by default is running) and it should return the name of pfsense.

Kea is not going to register dhcp hosts.. or dhcp reservations. If you want dhcp clients to be registered you have to be using ISC dhcp, and you have to have it set to register, and you have to make sure a client has gotten a dhcp lease.

If you want to to query by just hostname, your windows machine search suffix has to be set to query for the domain. Mine has home.arpa as its search suffix.. So yeah I can juts ping by host name for example

$ ping nas

Pinging nas.home.arpa [192.168.9.10] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.168.9.10: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=64

Notice how it comes back fully qualified.. You can see that with say an ipconfig /all

See the search suffix, and the domain set on the interface

$ ipconfig /all

Windows IP Configuration

   Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : i9-win
   Primary Dns Suffix  . . . . . . . : home.arpa
   Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Broadcast
   IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
   WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
   DNS Suffix Search List. . . . . . : home.arpa

Ethernet adapter Local:

   Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . : home.arpa
   Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Killer E2600 Gigabit Ethernet Controller
   Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : B0-4F-13-0B-FD-16
   DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
   Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
   IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.9.100(Preferred)
   Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
   Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : Thursday, February 15, 2024 3:24:00 PM
   Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : Monday, February 19, 2024 3:24:00 PM
   Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.9.253

.local that you see a mdns thing, if your client would do a mdns query (broadcast) then yes that device might answer, hey this is my IP with that .local domain..

[Octopuss]

@johnpoz I just put "lan" in there because the description of the field implied I was suppose to put in something. It didn't seem like it mattered what it was.
pfsense is called rozcestnik. so rozcestnik.lan.
And yes, I can ping it by hostname, even without the "suffix", and it works from other machines.

in Windows:

What do you mean by the Kea remark? A DHCP service is not going to register register DHCP leases? What? That makes no sense. Or what do you mean by that? I switched to it because the GUI said I was supposed to use it, the other option being removed soon, so what does all this mean?

[johnpoz]

@Octopuss said in Unable to access anything (?) by hostname:

A DHCP service is not going to register register DHCP leases? What? That makes no sense

Kea is a "PREVIEW" it is clearly stated in the release notes that dhcp and static reservations do no work as of yet.

https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/releases/2-7-1.html#rn-2-7-1-kea

And in the article when they announced move to kea

https://www.netgate.com/blog/netgate-adds-kea-dhcp-to-pfsense-plus-software-version-23.09-1

Basic functionality is present in version 23.09, but the Kea implementation lacks the following DHCP server features:

Local DNS Resolver/Forwarder Registration for static and dynamic DHCP clients
Remote DNS server registration
DHCPv6 Prefix Delegation
High Availability Failover
Lease statistics/graphs
Custom DHCP options

It stated it will be removed in a "FUTURE" version - it didn't say you had to switch.. While could of been worded better maybe.. It didn't say you have to switch now or your dhcp won't work ;)

[Octopuss]

@johnpoz OH. Ok. Well, it still doesn't work with ISC anyway :D

[johnpoz]

@Octopuss

Did your clients get a lease after you switched? Not sure if that works if just a renew? Are they set for a reservation, and you have it set to register reservations?

You sure its enabled? Which would be under the resolver settings (unbound)

Even if that is set the client does have to send its name, not all do.. etc.. You can always create a host override for names to IP that you want to resolve.

[Octopuss]

@johnpoz That works perfectly fine with either DHCP system. It's the hostnames in the local network that are the problem.

I'm sure I did have those two options checked before, but they aren't now for whatever reason. Let me see about that.

[Octopuss]

Yes, it works now.
I feel like an idiot again.
I didn't check these two settings, because I clearly remember enabling them in past. Maybe I forgot to flip them when I was installing pfSense onto the new box? Or I don't know.

[johnpoz]

@Octopuss it is quite possible that kea disabled them.. Pretty sure the dhcp register is enalbed out of the box. If I recall correctly dhcp reservation or static dhcp as sometimes called is not enabled out of the box.

But since kea doesn't currently do either of those, its quite possible when moving to key those get disabled..

it is often recommended to disable dhcp registration, because it causes a restart of unbound on every dhcp thing.. If you have a lot of devices and short lease time, etc.. its possible that the constant restart of unbound can cause problems.

It is hoped that the move to kea will once and for all remove the restarting of unbound on dhcp changes.