> 
> > sometimes it takes
> > "nslookup www.netbsd.org." with the trailing "."  and sometimes you
> > have to try both in alternation.  This problem has been happening for
> > months now.
> 
> i've never seen _anything_ like this, when looking up _any_ domain, in
> the entire time i've done sysadmin-ish things.  The closest i've ever
> seen was when name server in-core databases have gotten corrupted, and
> the name server starts wigging out...

Hmm, doesn't the resolver first try resolving the name by appending the
current domain name to it?  Lik in 'andrews.edu', if I do 'nslookup
www.netbsd.org', t first looks for 'www.netbsd.org.andrews.edu',
and _then_ goes about findking just 'www.netbsd.org' doesn't it?
My understanding is that adding the '.' as in 'nslookup www.netbsd.org.'
prevents the local domain from being appended.  So it should be a little
faster with the '.' on the request.  If you are not appending the '.' and
do not get consistent results, that should be related to your local
nameserver, not NetBSD, or anything.  If you _are_ always using the '.'
and it is getting confused, then you really have a problem. :-)
If you have root access to your local nameserver, turn on the debugging
and watch nslookup do its thing. 

-Andrew

-- 
==========================================================
Andrew Gillham                       gillham@andrews.edu
LAN/WAN/Netware/Unix Analyst
Resume -> http://www.cs.andrews.edu/~gillham/resume.html