Pfsense not resolving dns

So I’m working on a small project which is to have a virtulized network for various testing purposes. First off I don’t know if this is even possible so that would be nice to know. But anyways what I have so far is a pfsense vm and then 2 normal os vms(windows 10 and ubuntu). I know that pfsense is working because I can ping each of the normal vms within each other when connected to the pfsense vm and I can ping googles dns. The only thing I can’t do is resolve dns it just won’t do it. I have had this issue before when I tried to put pfsense on my home network but never figured it out. So any help would be appreciated.

Yes it is possible. How are the VMs IPs configured? Are they static or DHCP? If they are static make sure pfsense is the DNS. If it is DCHP verify that pfsense is giving pfsense as their DNS server. Lastly make sure that pfsense is set to forward DNS. without this pfsense will get a query it doesn’t know and say…IDK.

Have you configured any external DNS servers in pfsense? Under System > General setup

Sounds like you are trying to do NetBIOS across different networks. Ain’t going to happen.

In order to do what you want to do, you need ‘a real DNS server’. Typically, that’s Active Directory. What’s built into pfSense and configured by default is a DNS forwarder. It doesn’t do ‘real DNS’. Also, no being able to ping by name is handled by NetBIOS under regular circumstances. But since you have segmented your network, that’s not going to work either.

There are so many solutions to this problem, that it’s beyond what I’m willing to type out here. At this point, you’re going to have to nut-up on name resolution, or change what you are doing.

Ok so a little more information that may be helpful. I am using vmware for virtulization and I have the pfsense vm set with the wan going through the nat network adapter in vmware and then the lan goes through a host-onyl network adapter which is what the other vms are connected to. I have tried setting external dns servers such as googles in pfsense. As for setting pfsense to be it’s own dns I think I have tried that. I have changed the dns settings of the nat adapter to be 127.0.0.1 but this still doesn’t work. But from what @NetBandit is saying it sounds like resolving names is almost impossible in this configuration. Also I do have pfsense set to use the dns forwarder.

This is what I have. Pfsense has 2 NICs, one is bridged the other is a “lan segment” in WMWare. You need to have DNS forwarding enabled and have WAN DCHP overwrite DNS. Make sure pfsense it self can resolve DNS queries.

So I just did a fresh install of the pfsense vm because I had messed with to many settings. All I configured is I have the primary DNS server set to 8.8.8.8 and I have the wan DHCP overwrite set. I also set forwarding mode in the DNS resolver. I have the WAN interface connected to the NAT NIC in vmware not the bridged because I don’t want it registering on the external network. I also have DHCP disabled on the NAT and have the wan interface using a static IP but I do have the NAT DNS settings set to 8.8.8.8 also.

Can Pfsense ping out to the internet? Can Pfsense resolve names? If Yes proceed. Can a client resolve a name? If no, what does the wireshark traffic look like from one of the clients trying to resolve a name and what do the clients report their ip, gateway and dns are.

NOTE: pfsense has a 2 things under services: DNS forwarder and DNS resolver. The forwarder is turned off by default because it has been replaced by the resolver. Pfsense doesn’t like it when both are enabled because they use the same port for DNS by default. So use one or the other.