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2.11bsd resolver problem

R

Roe

Experienced Member
Joined
Dec 28, 2012
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240
Location
Regina, Canada
I'm running 2.11bsd on a pdp11/83. It's connected to the internet, and I have a problem when I set it up to use a name server. It appears that when a nameserver is declared in /etc/resolv.conf, the system ignores /etc/hosts completely.

The result is that "localhost" and the actual hostname are no longer valid, which causes problems with lpd and sendmail, among other things.

There doesn't seem to be an analog of the linux etc/nsswitch file available.

Anyone have any ideas?
 
Uniballer said:
And what's in the /etc/hosts file?
Click to expand...

The normal entries for localhost and the machine itself.

The problem seems to be that once a nameserver is declared in /etc/resolv.conf, the hosts file is no longer considered by the resolver library.
 
OK. I never actually ran 2.11BSD, but usually when somebody on BSD/Linux has this problem with a resolver and hosts file not working together there is a small error in one of the config files, or a file permission problem, or something like that. Good luck.
 
Are you sure that 2.11bsd had nsswitch.conf at all? When was this introduced?
Edit: this seems to imply that Solaris 2 had a method like nsswitch.conf. Solaris 2 was pre-released in June 1992, according to Wikipedia.
What year is your 2.11bsd from?
 
Last edited:
Probably unrelated: I have made the mistake of using tabs instead of spaces as separators in configuration files (don't remember which). Some older unix systems don't like this.
 
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