SunOS versions of BIND and YP

[Robert Havens Stine]

> I am interested in using the BIND nameserver for hostname resolution, and
> using YP for everything else.  Has anyone else done this?  Is it possible?
> Better yet has anyone gotten named and YP to play nice together?  If so
> then how.  Is there an alternative set of software that will provide the
> same functionality.

DNS for name resolution, YP for everything else made sense to us, but we
found it surprisingly difficult to implement.

At our site, we initially tried this by installing the libc library
available from uunet.  Doing this broke pcnfs and also our sendmail.cf
files.

After some floundering in trying to fix the sendmail.cf files, we
removed the new library, and tried a different approach: we compiled a
selected set of internet programs (sendmail, telnet, ftp, finger, and
ping) using the "resolv" library.

(Source for these programs is also available from uunet.  The file
herror.c is required by ping, telnet, and ftp; it's in directory
bsd-sources/src/lib/libc/net.)

BTW, make sure that a resolv.conf file is in each workstation's
/etc directory.  Also, at least for your mail daemons, you should
run sendmail.mx, in order to correctly use the DNS MX (mail exchanger)
records.

Interestingly, using "trace" to track the system calls of the network
programs that have been linked with the "resolv" lib shows that BOTH
the DNS resolver (in our case, named) and the YP system may be
accessed.

- Bob Stine
  SPARTA, Inc.
  stine at sparta.com