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Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!nrl-cmf!cmcl2!rutgers!rochester!uhura.cc.rochester.edu!ur-valhalla!socrates.ee.rochester.edu!deke
From: deke@socrates.ee.rochester.edu (Dikran Kassabian)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.sendmail,comp.dcom.lans
Subject: Re: sendmail, the resolver and /etc/hosts
Message-ID: <1473@valhalla.ee.rochester.edu>
Date: 20 Sep 88 18:58:30 GMT
References: <713@ncar.ucar.edu> <1469@valhalla.ee.rochester.edu> 
Sender: usenet@valhalla.ee.rochester.edu
Reply-To: deke@ee.rochester.edu (Dikran Kassabian)
Organization: UR Dept. of Electrical Engg, Rochester NY 14627
Lines: 42


In article  
	hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu (Charles Hedrick) writes:
>The suggestion was made to look at /etc/hosts if a domain query fails,
>so that you can add info for a host that isn't yet registered.  It
>seems to me that if you want to add local hacks like that you can
>just have your name servers load an extra startup file.  In
>/etc/named.boot, just include an extra file that defines local
>additions.

Well sure, that works, but it only addresses the case where there are
a few hosts that I know I want to reach... 

Many times a user on one of my systems begins a correspondance with someone
at a site we previously never mailed to.  The user at the remote site
gives our local user an address that he "knows" is good, 'cause its in the
hosts table.  Our user sends mail to that address and it bounces... there
isn't a nameserver to answer for that host in that domain.  The local user
can only conclude that my mail configuration is "screwed up".  After all,
his friend's mail makes it here (our address ee.rochester.edu, can be 
found both in /etc/hosts and by asking our nameserver, which I believe is
the only way currently to be absolutley correct).  To top it all off, the
address my users wants to reach is actually in /etc/hosts!  "Proof positive"
that my mail configuration is lousy.

What is the "right thing" to do here?  Many many sites continue to publish
addresses that are either in /etc/hosts (as distributed currently by NIC)
or served by their nameserver, but not in both places.  Understandable, I
suppose in a world that's in a state of transistion.  Add to this the
"backwards" addresses of JANET and other nightmares, and the temptation to
kludge things to work in the "exceptions" cases grows.

This is some of the motivation behind my suggestion to change the way
gethostbyname() works.... and as I said in my original posting, I freely
open myself up to the flames.


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 \\\  Deke Kassabian, URochester Department of Electrical Engineering  \\\
  \\\ deke@ee.rochester.edu                  "I never metacharacter     \\\
   \\\   or ...!rochester!ur-valhalla!deke     I didn't like......"      \\\
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