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Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 10:46:08 -0700
From: fyeung@fyeung8.netific.com (Francis Yeung)
Message-Id: <9704071746.AA02947@fyeung8.netific.com>
To: joki@kuebart.stuttgart.netsurf.de, helbig@MX.BA-Stuttgart.De
Subject: Re: Netscape Navigator 3.01 without named
Cc: questions@freebsd.org
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Greetings,

	I have noticed a few other things related with Netscape under FreeBSD.
	
	In accessing a round robin site, Netscape never tries
to retrieve the DNS again of that site. It stays happy with the DNS (IP address)
that it got once before. The round robin site works fine for other applications
e.g. telnet, ftp and lynx. For some reason, not for Netscape - even though
the caches have setup to have 0 memory. In general, if there are 3 sites in
a round robin setup e.g. www1, www2 and www3 and they are named WWW.
If I do http://WWW, I would expect Netscape to get www1 first. The following
http://WWW, I would expect Netscape to issue another DNS enquiry and to get
back www2 as the "WWW". Instead, Netscape always stays with www1 as the "WWW".
Maybe, I did miss something somewhere.

	BTW, you don't need named. Just setup the /etc/resolv.conf.

	Francis 


> From root@fyeung25.netific.com Sat Apr  5 16:42 PST 1997
> From: Wolfgang Helbig <helbig@MX.BA-Stuttgart.De>
> Subject: Re: Netscape Navigator 3.01 without named
> To: joki@kuebart.stuttgart.netsurf.de (Joachim Kuebart)
> Date: Sun, 6 Apr 1997 01:56:11 +0200 (MET DST)
> Cc: questions@freebsd.org
> Mime-Version: 1.0
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
> X-Loop: FreeBSD.org
> 
> Hi,
> 
> > Has anybody else noticed the problem that Netscape Navigator 3.01 wants to 
> > get DNS data before querying a host? My local setup works with a /etc/hosts file
> > and /etc/host.conf is:
> > 
> > 	hosts
> > 	bind
> > 
> > I am unable to get Netscape connect to the local httpd even if I enter its IP address,
> > Netscape keeps complaining about not finding the hosts DNS entry (although it is located
> > in the /etc/hosts file). Do I have to start named (and live with the overhead) to get
> > it working properly?
> > 
> > c u Jo
> > 
> 
> Netscape and some other programs (nslookup(8), host(1)) seem to ignore
> /etc/host.conf and /etc/hosts. This annoying "feature" unnecessarily
> bloats the administration of small local networks that are connected
> to the Internet by a switched line only.
> 
> I am very much interested in a solution to this problem that avoids
> firing up named just for telling me who I am.
> 
> Wolfgang
> 
>