icmp: unknown protocol

[Thamm]

Hi,
I get the following message on an 11.11 system:

ping "Servername"
icmp: unknown protocol

What to do?

Regards,
Stefan

[Elmar P. Kolkman]

Check your /etc/protocols file I guess.

[Thamm]

Hi,
file /etc/protocols:
# Internet (IP) protocols
#
ip 0 IP # internet protocol, pseudo protocol number
icmp 1 ICMP # internet control message protocol
igmp 2 IGMP # internet group management protocol
ggp 3 GGP # gateway-gateway protocol
tcp 6 TCP # transmission control protocol
egp 8 EGP # exterior gateway protocol
pup 12 PUP # PARC universal packet protocol
udp 17 UDP # user datagram protocol
hmp 20 HMP # host monitoring protocol
xns-idp 22 XNS-IDP # Xerox NS IDP
rdp 27 RDP # "reliable datagram" protocol


Seems to be OK.

[Jean-Louis Phelix]

I agree with Elmar. If this file is correct, you can also try to add "protocols: file" to your /etc/nsswitch.conf file.

Regards.

[Elmar P. Kolkman · Accepted solution]

Since your /etc/protocols file looks fine to me, check out if it is being used... nsswitch.conf is the file that should be in. I've tested and if that is incorrect it gives exactly the message you get...

[Thamm]

Hi,
I changed the entry in
/etc/nsswitch.conf
from
protocols: nis [NOTFOUND=return TRYAGAIN=continue] files
to
protocols: files [NOTFOUND=continue] nis


Now it works fine!!
Thank you.
Have a nice weekend with no server-problems.

Stefan.