[freebsd-stable@freebsd.org] Hosts/dns contention in FBSD 5.4

[Malcolm Kay]

On Wed, 5 Oct 2005 01:07 am, Robert Zagarello wrote:
> When the DNS can't be reached you need to have the
> server's host name in your local-LAN accessing
> client's hosts file.  Either way, the client hosts
> file will be checked first before DNS access (this is
> true for Windows OSs at least), so because of this you
> can use any name in your local client, i.e., a NetBIOS
> name for example (non-dotted up to 15-character,
> etc.).
>

Of course I have entries in /etc/hosts for both source and 
destination on both client and destination machines.

I don't recall seeing this sort of problem in FreeBSD 4.x
so any comparison with Windows seems quite irrelevant.

Thanks for trying,
Malcolm

> BZAG
> ================
>
> --- Malcolm Kay <malcolm.kay at internode.on.net> wrote:
> > I have sytems both at home and at work running
> > FreeBSD 5.4
> > ...
> > But if the internet connection breaks -- e.g. the
> > routers crash
> > or the ISP connection fails for some reason then
> > trying to ssh
> > into the machine from another local machine is a
> > problem --
> > either timing out our taking a very very long time.
> >
> > ...
> >
> > Now it is my understanding that resolution of host
> > names should
> > determine from /etc/host.conf and/or
> > /etc/nsswitch.conf whether
> > to first try /etc/host or the dns server addressed
> > by
> > /etc/resolv.conf
> >
> > I believe these should give preference to /etc/hosts
> > but
> > never-the-less things get stuck when the dns server
> > can't be
> > reached.
> >