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From: arc@thyme.wpd.sgi.com (Andrew Cherenson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
Subject: Re: HELP! I am in a BIND.
Message-ID: <74291@sgi.sgi.com>
Date: 6 Nov 90 20:17:13 GMT
References: <9011030433.AA05693@karron.med.nyu.edu>
Sender: guest@sgi.sgi.com
Reply-To: arc@sgi.com (Andrew Cherenson)
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc., Mountain View, CA
Lines: 48

In article <9011030433.AA05693@karron.med.nyu.edu> karron%CMCL2.NYU.EDU@cunyvm.cuny.edu writes:
>
>I have an unusual situation where I wish to run BIND as a local server, but
>my machine is generally a network client.
>
>When named is running, my machine looks to a domain host for info as to
>who it is. If that machine is not running, or my machine is disconnected
>from the net, it will NOT boot. This is not a good situation to be in.

In IRIX 3.3 (and most likely 3.2), the name server is NOT used during booting 
-- only /etc/hosts is used.

You don't state what release you're running, which is an important piece
of information.  If you're running 3.2, then the window system may not
come up -- perhaps that's what you mean by not booting? You need to install 
3.3, because 4sight is much more robust when the name server doesn't respond.

>I am trying to configure my machine to only know a minimal ammount of
>information about itself and a few other vital machines on the net. The
>static host table is not used by the named BIND stuff, and all queries
>for static info without named running fail (The /etc/hosts and named should
>not ignore each other, but that is another thing that will have to be
>fixed).  

Ah, but they can both be used in IRIX 3.3.
Install 3.3 and then look at the resolver(4) man page and the
administration chapter in the new Network Communications Guide.

>My resolver.conf file has slots for three nameservers. I want
>my machine to be first, the domain server second, and the super domain
>server third. The documentation says to specify the local host as
>0.0.0.0, not localhost, or loopback. nslookup does not seem to be able to
>query the local host named, and so I am wondering if the way I want to
>run this is possible ?

Are you sure the name server is running on your machine? With that
resolv.conf setup, nslookup will work if the local server is running.

>I only want to keep minimal info, really, only about my machine on my local
>server, and let it cache info about the net locally. If it is possible,
>can I have my machine distribute info about itself to the other name servers ?

Look at info about setting up a forwarding server in the BIND chapter in 
the NCG.

>Is there any scripts that can turn an /etc/hosts file into a named.hosts file ?

Something is planned for a future release.