Re: tlug: Netscape Vs. /etc/hosts

[Scott Stone <sstone@example.com>]

On Thu, 25 Jun 1998, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

> >>>>> "Jonathan" == Jonathan Byrne <- 3Web <jq@example.com>> writes:
> 
>     Jonathan> Does anybody know if Netscape ignores /etc/hosts on
>     Jonathan> Linux?  We have private networks for out office
>     Jonathan> machines, with some in Osaka and some in Tokyo.  Tokyo
>     Jonathan> is the 192.168.2 network, and Osaka is 192.168.1.  I put
>     Jonathan> the IP address of one of the machines on the Osaka
>     Jonathan> network into my /etc/hosts file with the FQDN of
>     Jonathan> sparc1.threeweb.ad.jp, and the nickname of sparc1.
>     Jonathan> Pinging it and telnetting to it work fine, but Netscape
>     Jonathan> is a no-go.  I have to put in its IP address to get
>     Jonathan> Netscape to find it.
> 
> Netscape does some tricks with the DNS.  The normal Unix interface to
> getting IP addresses is `gethostbyname'.  This sucks big time in a WWW 
> environment because `gethostbyname' blocks.  Since providing true
> threads on all the platforms Netscape supports would be a bitch, what
> they have done is created a second process which acts as a poor man's
> DN server for Netscape only, and asking that does _not_ block.  I
> don't know if Linux does this, but I think it does.
> 
> So DNS stuff for Netscape is complex.  I don't know how this would
> create the problem you're seeing, but it might be related.
> 
> Look at your /etc/host.conf file.  Since you have a short /etc/hosts
> file (I assume) you probably won't get hurt much by doing `order
> hosts, bind' in it, and that should work right.  Warning, that CAN
> burn you if you have a network that gets reconfigured a lot, since
> you'll have out of date DNS information.

Assuming Jonathan is still using TurboLinux, the default is to 'order
hosts,bind', and 'multi on' as well.

--------------------------------------------------
Scott M. Stone <sstone@example.com, sstone@example.com>
               <sstone@example.com>
Linux Developer/Systems Administrator for Pacific HiTech, Inc. 
http://www.pht.com		http://armadillo.pht.co.jp
http://www.pht.co.jp	        http://www.turbolinux.com


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