tlug: Netscape Vs. /etc/hosts

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

>>>>> "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you'll have out of date DNS information.

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