FTP and Nameservice difficulty under SunOS 4.1.1

[Jon Geld]

I'm not sure if this topic was discussed long ago when SunOS 4.0 was
released.  I am in the process of doing a long overdue upgrade of our Sun
3 network from SunOS v3.2 to v4.1.1.  On the 3.2 system we had to install
the domain nameserver as a separate program since it was not part of that
OS version.  We have had it running for quite a while with no problems.
However, one of the things we had to do to get ftp and telnet to work with
BIND was to copy over new versions of those programs that were designed to
work with BIND.

Well, as I've been installing 4.1.1 Nameservice I've run into a problem
involving ftp and telnet.  I know that the name resolver is working
correctly: nslookup shows it polling the non-departmental nameservers and
finally acquiring any internet address we request.  Plus, since the 3/160
is also our departmental nameserver it seems to be handling the requests
of other (non-sun) machines correctly and giving them correct addresses.
However, ftp and telnet on the 3/160 do not recognize the names of any
hosts other than those within the local host table.  When trying to ftp to
a non-local address, I get an unknown host response from ftp.  Nslookup
finds that non-local address fine, though.  The same happens with telnet.
I would have thought that since sun was including the name resolver with
the OS that ftp and telnet would know how to use it.  Is this not the
case?  Do I need to post over a new ftp and telnet from some other source?
Or is there some sequence of things I need to do in SunOS to get them to
work correctly?  In Ultrix there is a file called /etc/svcorder (something
else in the new Ultrix) which tells utilities like ftp and telnet what
order to poll the network services for addresses, ie: first local, second
NIS, and third BIND.  Is there an equivalent in SunOS that I am missing?
The System and Network Administration manual is just not very useful here.

I hope I'm not the only one who has experienced this.  It is somewhat
frustrating.  I'd really appreciate any help which can be offered.

Jon Geld			|  geld at mail.physics.lsa.umich.edu