This is driving me nuts.

Setting up a system with multiple subnets and dns zones. So for example, zone1.local and zone2.local.

We have server1a and 1b in zone1, server2a and 2b in zone2, so their FQDNs are: server1a.zone1.local, server1b.zone1.local, server2a.zone2.local and server2b.zone2.local.

Our DNS server is all Active Directory based. For Windows clients, I've fixed the problem by specifying DNS search orders through a GPO. But for our Red Hat servers, I can't figure it out.

If I don't use the FQDN, server1a can see server1b because it's in the same DNS zone, but cannot see server2a or 2b unless I type the FQDN. What I want is that failing on the local DNS suffix, it tries on other defined ones (here, zone2.local).

Any ideas?

TIA

You just need an extra entry in resolv.conf (which I think is manually managed on RHEL5 so you should just be able to edit it by hand), for example:

search zone1.local zone2.local
nameserver 192.168.1.1
nameserver 192.168.2.1