Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-ncis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ucbvax!LANL.GOV!cpw%sneezy
From: cpw%sneezy@LANL.GOV (C. Philip Wood)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re:  Reconciling /etc/hosts, yp, and named?
Message-ID: <8901131834.AA00439@sneezy.lanl.gov>
Date: 13 Jan 89 18:34:41 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 26

When you find the answer let us all know.

My feeling is that a gethostby{name,addr} routine should have a heirarchy
of lookup which could be configurable.  But the default would be something
like:

	/etc/hosts could contain the following kinds of entries:
		hostname
		+hostname
		+
	Order would be important.
	Then gethostby{name,addr} would do the following:
	
	Unless directed by some environment variable or other policy
	mechanism:
		open /etc/hosts and attempt to resolve the name
		by searching sequentially through /etc/hosts
		if the name is found and has the prefix '+' goto
		the "YP domainname server for that host"
		if the name is not found and the standalone '+' is
		found then try the YP server.
		If all the above has failed then go for the Internet
		Domain nameserver pointed to by /etc/resolv.conf or
		whatever mechanism.  If there is no pointer to 
		an Internet Domain nameserver then I guess you are done!