summary of uunet libc_resolv responses

[Robert E. Wargaski Jr.]

Following is a summary of the responses I received from my posting
regarding using the uunet libc_resolv.so.sun4 library.

>>>>>>>>>>

X-From: Paul O'Neill <pvo at oce.orst.edu>

The gateway/server machine's /etc/exports, /etc/hosts.lpd,
/etc/hosts.equiv and all users' .rhosts must contain the fully qualified
domain name once you are using DNS.  Change the netgroups to fully
qualified if using YP.

>>>>>>>>>>

X-From: Vaughan Pratt <pratt at cs.stanford.edu>

	A removal of /usr/lib/libc.so.1.3.1 and a reboot cured all of the
	problems.

A ldconfig is less drastic than a reboot in this situation.

If your problem is that you occasionally find yourself without nameservice
(due to a gateway being down while other machines continue to work) but
you still need to be able to access machines you know about, you should
arrange for some machine(s) that *is* up to be your local nameserver.  Run
named on it (remember to have rc.local activate it, in case you've
commented it out).  Give it a named.boot containing

cache		.			/etc/named.ca
primary		0.0.127.IN-ADDR.ARPA	/etc/named.local

In /etc/named.local put entries like

foo.baz.edu.	9999999 IN A 192.92.157.1

The period after the edu is essential unless you have a default domain
defined by $ORIGIN.

>>>>>>>>>>

X-From: Kevin Brady <brady at mgmt4.ncsl.nist.gov>

I encountered the same problem, I called SUN and they say it is a definite
name-server problem, but could not give me a fix for it. We were having
problems with mail, and when I installed the new library, everything
worked great, I thought.  When I went to reboot, the diskless nodes could
not mount the root file system. If you run bootparamd on the server in
debug mode you will see the error. So, what I am doing until I here
something better from SUN is to

1) rename the new library to somthing .tmp
2) boot the system, it will use the old library and the clients should be
   happy
3) after all node are up, rename the new library back to its original
   name.
4) do an "ldconfig" do have the system use the new library. Telnet, ftp
   and the mailer will be happy.

This is a gross process but it woks temporarily. Please let me know if you
find out a better way.

>>>>>>>>>>

X-From: John Kimball <jkimball at src.honeywell.com>

   Subject: Problems with libc_resolv.so.sun4 from uunet

   When our gateway/server machine crashed later in the day, all of the other
   SPARCs were unable to use the gateway/server's printer, and were unable to
   mount the gateway/server's disks.
   A removal of /usr/lib/libc.so.1.3.1 and a reboot cured all of the
   problems.

In case you haven't gotten an answer yet:  we just had the same
experience.  Here's how we fixed our instantiation of the problem:

o Printing.  In /etc/hosts.lpd, we had the short form of all our host
  names.  IE, it listed 
          mingus 
  not 
          mingus.src.honeywell.com
  When we changed hosts.lpd so that both forms were present:
          mingus 
          mingus.src.honeywell.com
  we could print from mingus again. 

o Mounting.  In our netgroups, we had the short form of all our hosts
  names: 
        mingus (mingus,-,SRC) 
        ellington (ellington,-,SRC) 
        TRUSTED-HOSTS ellington mingus 
So we put both the short and long forms in again: 
        mingus (mingus,-,SRC) (mingus.src.honeywell.com,-,SRC) 
        ellington (ellington,-,SRC) (ellington.src.honeywell.com,-,SRC) 
        TRUSTED-HOSTS ellington mingus 
And we could mount again.  (Our /etc/exports said something like /
-access=TRUSTED-HOSTS )

Our hypothesis is that the new resolver returns the fully qualified name,
so the host-verification code was comparing the long form against the
short form, and failing.

>>>>>>>>>>>

X-From: Paul Traina <pst at ack.stanford.edu>

You probably have a misconfigured hosts.lpd or hosts.equiv.  The resolver
will always return "foobar.your.domain" as opposed to "foobar" when one
does a reverse name lookup (what gethostbyaddr does).

Tack on your domain to all files like:
	/etc/hosts.lpd
	/etc/hosts.equiv
	all .rhosts files

Depending upon how buggy sunos still is, you may have to insure that you
get the capitialization of the name correct too.

You can use the nslookup program to do reverse queries.

Script started on Fri Mar  9 11:18:07 1990

ack-[pst-1> nslookup
Default Server:  Jessica.Stanford.EDU
Address:  36.21.0.20

> set q=PTR
> 158.0.21.36.in-addr.arpa.
Server:  Jessica.Stanford.EDU
Address:  36.21.0.20

[[ this is asking for the name of host at ip address 36.21.0.158 ]]

158.0.21.36.in-addr.arpa	host name = ack.Stanford.EDU
> set q=A
> ack.stanford.edu
Server:  Jessica.Stanford.EDU
Address:  36.21.0.20

Name:    ack.stanford.edu
Address:  36.21.0.158

script done on Fri Mar  9 11:18:48 1990

>>>>>>>>>>

Robert E. Wargaski Jr.			| This is stupid. -- Vila
wargaski at acns.nwu.edu			| When did that ever stop us. -- Avon
NU Distributed Systems Services		| . . . #include <disclaimer.h> . . .