Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!usc!cs.utexas.edu!mailrus!cornell!ken
From: ken@gvax.cs.cornell.edu (Ken Birman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.isis
Subject: Re: Does ISIS use nameserver?
Keywords: nameserver
Message-ID: <43293@cornell.UUCP>
Date: 13 Jul 90 16:30:19 GMT
References: <197@locke.water.ca.gov>
Sender: nobody@cornell.UUCP
Reply-To: ken@gvax.cs.cornell.edu (Ken Birman)
Organization: Cornell Univ. CS Dept, Ithaca NY
Lines: 25

In article <197@locke.water.ca.gov> rfinch@caldwr.water.ca.gov (Ralph Finch) writes:
>
>We are bringing up a new Sun machine on the net, which means we have a
>complicated mix of OS versions, GIS (nee YP), and nameserver.  We
>noticed that ISIS doesn't recognize other sites unless they are
>entered in the /etc/hosts file.  I am told by our sysadmin that under
>nameservice, it shouldn't be necessary to update that file.  So now we
>are not sure if we have set up nameserver wrong or if ISIS needs all
>machine entries in hosts.

Problems in this mapping are very common among ISIS users -- in fact,
most ISIS "bugs" that we hear about are basically errors or problems in
/etc/hosts or the YP version of this, /yp/etc/hosts.

ISIS uses "gethostbyname(3N)" to map from host names to INET network
addresses.  If the installed version of gethostbyname() uses YP, as on
most SUN systems, then ISIS will be reading from /yp/etc/hosts.  If YP
is not in use, then gethostbyname() runs out of /etc/hosts, and hence
ISIS does.  My guess is that your installed version of gethostbyname 
is no longer compatible with your nameserver.  This would be a fairly
typical error on the part of the people who administer your network,
who may not have realized that when the nameserver was changed the library
needed to be rebuilt.

Ken