Technical Tip: FortiGate DNS does not show status/MS state and not DNS resolution

Description

This article describes how to solve the issue when the FortiGate does not show any status at the 'ms' (milliseconds) level, and there is also no DNS resolution.

Scope

FortiGate system.

Solution

There are scenarios where the FortiGate does not show any DNS status or 'ms', and the resolution does not work at all. This could be an issue with the daemon at the kernel level that does not initialize correctly.

In order to check if the daemon/process is fine, do the following:

Check if, after changing the IPs over the DNS and also the protocols, the status is not shown and the screen is white all the time

Go to Network -> DNS and check if there is no status.

Expected status/MS even in an 'unreachable' state means the DNS daemon is up and running:

Also, if checking the process when searching for 'DNS', the process is not there, which means that the process/daemon is not initialized, and because of that, the DNS will never work.

In order to solve this issue, a reboot of the FortiGate will be needed in order to initialize the process. A KILL or restart of the process will not work because the process never started in the first place. After doing the reboot, the DNS will start fine and will show the status/MS, and also the resolution will work again.