*BSD News Article 63763


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From: ejr@dickens.bra01.icl.co.uk (Ed Randall)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: FreeBSD Routing Hang on Boot
Date: 18 Mar 1996 12:24:15 GMT
Organization: ICL, Bracknell, UK
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References: <Pine.LNX.3.91.960317215552.8080A-100000@gallup.cia-g.com>
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Stephen Fisher (lithium@cia-g.com) wrote:
: The most common cause of this is that you are setting up routes using host
: names (like route add default router.my.net) but the name server (either
: on your machine or another) isn't available yet.  So it sits there trying
: to resolve router.my.net and takes a long time to time out eventually and
: move on (it takes 60-70 seconds if I remember correctly). 

Yeah, but on my machine I have the order set to "hosts, bind"
and it still takes ages (unless you use the numeric IP addresses).

IMHO numeric IC addresses should be confined to the
places where they belong, and not scattered willy-nilly throughout 
various configuration files.  Imagine the extra effort required if you
needed to change the IP address of your default router on 50 machines
and it appears in several places as well as /etc/hosts (and you
weren't using BIND on the site) [and no "well use BIND then" flames thanks]. 

Presumably the delay is caused by gethostbyname() or something related
not taking notice of the "hosts, bind" configuration option ?
Is there a fix for us "hosts, bind" people ?

Regards,

Ed