puzzling tcpip problem. ODM messed up?

[Eliot Lim]

I've been called in to fix an RS6000 which has been fubar'd by people
who didn't know what they were doing.  It concerns tcpip.  First, some
details:

- running 3005/3.1.5 code


Symtoms:

- machine can go out on the network anywhere and do all tcpip services.

- nothing outside can come in.  only ping from outside gets a response.

- nfs works fine.

- yes, inetd is running, and inetd.conf has all the stuff uncommented.

- the machine cannot even ping/telnet/rlogin/finger itself.  what makes
  this even more wierd is that i can rlogin to another machine out on the
  net and this remote machine can ping it.

- I've noticed that telnetd/rlogind do not get fired up when a remote
  machine is attempting connection.  it seems that inetd does not
  recognise the connection request.

- yes, the ip addresses match in the smit-tcpip menu, /etc/hosts and
  ifconfig.  I have tried reconfiguring tcpip from scratch, erasing
  /etc/hosts & resolv.conf, even replacing the inetd executable... no
  luck.

- ifconfig shows all the right flags, broadcast, netmask etc.  there's
  a sun 4 on the same wire with the same set up that works a-ok.

- i've tried flushing the routing table, running routed etc, no luck.

- it seems that this machine has an identity crisis.  Since all the ascii
  files look alright, the finger drifts towards the mysterious ODM.  I
  wonder if the information in there is messed up.  If so, how would I
  clear it up?  I have tried the smit-tcpip-minimum configuration bit,
  but no success.  Anyone out there have any clues?  I hate to reinstall,
  since 3005 is an update and not an install.  ie. i will have to put on
  3003 then apply 3005.

Thanks in advance,

Eliot Lim
Univ. of Washington
Seattle