Small problem with Name resolution and the DHCP DNS forwarding service

[EvoIX_MR2006]

Hey Guys,

I’ve got a simple PFSense 1.2.2 box up on a VM, with a private network backend connecting to the public network via PFSense.  The machines behind the pfsense box can communicate just fine with the outside world, however the DNS forwarder service does not seem to be working properly – when DNS servers are explicitly defined, they are able to resolve names as usual, but they cannot use the PFSense box as a DNS server.  I’m assuming it’s related to my second problem – PFSense cannot resolve names.  Whenever I go into the shell and try and ping a host, it cannot do DNS lookups.  I’ve tried several different DNS servers that I know to work, but none fix the issue.  I am able to access the interface via the public internet via  NAT-firewall rule, so I believe the firewall piece is working correctly, just hoping to get this fixed so I can do auto-updates.

Not sure what I'm doing wrong here, but I'm sure there is something!

Thanks for any help!

[wallabybob]

What happens when you ping or traceroute your preferred name server (by IP address) from the pfSense shell?

Does pfSense have exclusive use of the interface its using as its WAN interface or does the VM host get involved? If the latter, what does the VM host do with attempts to access your preferred name server?

And is there a good reason not to be working with pfSense 1.2.3?