telnet to linux box.

[Jessica Chou]

When I telnet to a linux box from a pc with
netterm (or SimpTerm), after it has resolved the host.domainname (showing as ...
"Welcome to host.domain
Linpus Linux release 6.4")
why it takes 5 more seconds (sometimes even more) to get out login prompt?
Any setting I need to fix?

thank you.

Jessica

[Albert E. Whale, CISSP · Accepted solution]

You want to configure DNS to work properly.

Check the following files:

/etc/hosts
/etc/resolv.conf
/etc/nsswitch.conf

If you are going to be using DNS services locally, then you will also need a
/etc/named.boot or /etc/named.conf file depending on whether you are running Named 4 or Named 8.

Hope that helps.

Have a Great Day!

[Kofi ARTHIABAH]

Jessica:

Albert is absolutely right - the way that most inet services work is as follows:
when a client tries to connect, attempt to do a reverse name lookup on the client's IP... using your set up in your /etc/nsswitch.conf file (so if you have in your /etc/nsswitch.conf file
hosts: files [NOTFOUND=continue] dns
it will first consult your /etc/hosts file and if it does not find the hostname, it will consult the dns servers specified in your /etc/resolv.conf)
if this fails (after a resolver timeout ie. the 5 seconds that you are having to wait) it will give up and give you a prompt anyway.

it is a good idea to make sure that hosts you are connecting from are listed in your /etc/hosts file if they are not in your dns. Otherwise, there are other services that will actually fail - eg. rsh.

Good luck