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Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!agate!doc.ic.ac.uk!pipex!sunic!uts!iesd!herring From: herring@iesd.auc.dk (B. Erickson Herring) Subject: [Q NetBSD-0.9] DNS, /etc/hosts, and name-resolution Message-ID: <HERRING.93Sep8113615@havlit.iesd.auc.dk> Sender: news@iesd.auc.dk (UseNet News) Organization: Mathematics and Computer Science, Aalborg University Date: 08 Sep 1993 10:36:14 GMT Lines: 48 OK, I've read every *BSD article that was left in our spool, I've read the FAQ, I've dug through my library, and I've asked everyone who would listen to me. Now I am posting to .questions so as not to presume that I have a bug :-) We have installed 0.9 from scratch and set it up in our network (composed of several hundred Sun machines). When I have an /etc/resolv.conf file, the following two lines from /etc/netstart fail (machine doesn't find `localhost') -- that is, /etc/hosts is not consulted: # set the address for the loopback interface ifconfig lo0 inet 127.0.0.1 # localhost # use loopback, not the wire route add $hostname 127.0.0.1 # localhost If, after booting, I `mv /etc/resolv.conf /etc/resolv.conf.old' and then issue the commands by hand, there is no problem -- that is, /etc/hosts is consulted. The relevant manpage (gethostbyname(3)) says: This structure contains either the information obtained from the name server, named(8), or broken-out fields from a line in /etc/hosts. If the local name server is not running these routines do a lookup in /etc/hosts. which I interpret to mean "if named is not running on the local machine, /etc/hosts should be consulted before going to the DNS". So, what's the deal? Is there some type of resolver-configuration file that specifies how names are fromulated into IP addresses? I know that in Linux there is an /etc/host.conf file. The same file exists on 386bsd.first.gmd.de, which claims to be running FreeBSD. All input appreciated. I've started digging through the source, but it would be nice to know what "expected behavior" is in this situation. Thanks, Erick -- ----- Erick Herring | Computation is the art of carefully throwing H Data, Aalborg | away information [and] Life is the art of UNIX Consulting | carefully throwing away opportunities, an SysAdmin & Programming | interesting coincidental parallel. herring@iesd.auc.dk | - Guy L. Steele Jr.