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Date: Tue, 25 Mar 1997 21:20:28 -0500 (EST)
From: Thomas David Rivers <ponds!rivers@dg-rtp.dg.com>
Message-Id: <199703260220.VAA01969@lakes.water.net>
To: ponds!freebsd.org!bugs, ponds!george.lbl.gov!jin
Subject: Re: /etc/hosts no longer used for rexec() ?
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> 
> % more /etc/host.conf 
> # $Id: host.conf,v 1.2 1993/11/07 01:02:57 wollman Exp $
> # If that doesn't work, then try the /etc/hosts file
> hosts
> # Default is to use the nameserver first
> bind
> # If you have YP/NIS configured, uncomment the next line
> # nis
> 
> I guess it is a bug in somewhere I do not know. ping and telnet work well
> under such circumstance.
> However, rsh, rcp, rlogin etc. do NOT work if DNS is not reachable. It may be
> the rexec() 's problem. I am sure they tried to talk to DNS even though my
> /etc/host.conf is correct. The tcpdump shows that these program try to talk
> to DNS regardless the /etc/hosts and /etc/host.conf. So, I changed the Subject.

 I reported a similar observation (rlogin seemed to wait for a DNS
server to time out even when /etc/host.conf was configured to look
at 'hosts' first.)

 I think this has something to do with the reverse look-up (which
the r-cmds do).. that is , here's an IP address; what's the name.
That was my best guess at the time. [See the mail archives for
my previous ramblings about 2.1.5 and DNS and rlogin...]

 I did discover that in 2.1.6.1 this problem seems to be improved.
 
 Also, I had:
	domain my.domain
	nameserver xxx.xx.xx.x
	nameserver xxx.xx.xx.x
	nameserver 127.0.0.1

as I was thinking of running a local caching name server to get
around the problem... but I never got it set up.  I found that removing
the last line helps greatly with the problem (I suppose if the
network is unreachable, you don't have to wait for a timeout.)

 Do you have something like that?

> 
> -Jin
>