problem with ssh in 4.9 and /etc/hosts file

[Lowell Gilbert]

henry tieman <henryt_NOSPAM at aracnet.com> writes:

> I have a small home network, 2 machines, both running FreeBSD 4.9. One
> with fixed IP address running ppp with NAT and a DHCP server and the
> other machine is a DHCP client.  Both machines have the standard
> host.conf file and a /etc/hosts file that only differs on the
> localhost line.  The standard host.conf file tells the network to use
> the /etc/hosts file first before trying DNS.  I do not want to run a
> DNS server on my local network.
> 
> When I'm connected using PPP - ssh from the DHCP server to the client
> has no pause.
> 
> When I'm not dialed up - the ssh connection from server to client is
> very slow. There's about a 75 sec wait before the password prompt.
> Client to client also has the pause w/o ppp running.  But server to
> server and client to server are fast.
> 
> I think I've traced it down to a call to getnameinfo() in sshd.  There
> are 3 (or more) implementations of this function in the source for
> FreeBSD 4.9.  All versions I've found of getnameinfo() call
> gethostbyaddr() - which has 2 (or more) versions in the source. At
> least one doesn't read /etc/host.conf and only makes calls to DNS. The
> one in contrib/bind is evil. Yes, it is compiled in /usr/obj.  No, I
> don't know if it's linked with sshd - that requires another makeworld
> which is running now.
> 
> There are two work arounds for using ssh without recompiling so I'm
> not too worried.  But I don't have sendmail setup to the outside so I
> can't create a problem report.

A problem report isn't appropriate.  What you need is that *both* of
the machines have /etc/hosts entries for the other machine.