Return to BSD News archive
Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.rmit.EDU.AU!news.unimelb.EDU.AU!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!paladin.american.edu!gatech!usenet.eel.ufl.edu!tank.news.pipex.net!pipex!dispatch.news.demon.net!demon!awfulhak.demon.co.uk!awfulhak.demon.co.uk!awfulhak.demon.co.uk!not-for-mail From: brian@awfulhak.demon.co.uk (Brian Somers) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Lookup problems Date: 18 Apr 1996 02:38:20 +0100 Organization: Coverform Ltd. Lines: 36 Message-ID: <4l46ec$ah@anorak.coverform.lan> References: <4kpiuf$hpv@news.nstn.ca> X-NNTP-Posting-Host: awfulhak.demon.co.uk X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Mike Digdon (digdon@yohoho.org) wrote: : I am having a problem with sendmail and name lookups. : In my /etc/host.conf file, I have the following entries: : hosts : bind : This obviously means check the /etc/hosts file first, and then go through : named. : In my /etc/hosts file, I have the following entry: : 137.186.184.254 pirate.yohoho.org pirate : Now, when I do a ping of pirate.yohoho.org, it properly gets the name/number : from the hosts file. I know this because my resolv.conf points to 2 : nameservers that require a ppp connection to get to, and I did the test with : no connection. : However, when I try to send mail to user@pirate.yohoho.org, sendmail says : that it can't lookup the name of the host. What's going on here? Ping gets : the name/number from the hosts file, but sendmail doesn't. Why? 'cos sendmail things it's smart and doesn't use "gethostbyname". I find this enormously irritating too ! I have a local network, all of which is specified in my /etc/hosts file. I also have demand-dialed PPP. If I send mail to a local machine, the PPP link comes up, the DNS at the other end says "never heard of him" and sendmail happily sends things (it must look in /etc/hosts). Maybe sendmail has an out-of-sync algorythim and it is actually possible to get it to look in /etc/hosts first - dunno ! -- Brian <brian@awfulhak.demon.co.uk> Don't _EVER_ lose your sense of humour....