11.23 11.11 w/ IPv6 requires ipnodes paramter in nsswitch.conf

[Todd Whitcher]

Name resolution delays can occur causing issues w/ programs like telnet ftp nfs sendmail etc. that are doing reverse lookups on incoming requests if the ipnodes paramter is not specified in /etc/nsswitch.conf. A common issue w/ failed name resolution lookups.

I've ran into this a few times w/ customers and did a quick search on the forums to see if anyone had posted information about it. Since I didnt see anything I thought I'd save some troubleshooting down the road and submit this post.

For 11.23 IPv6 is loaded w/ the core os for 11.11 its available via the tour package. If you have IPv6 installed on your system you "may" and probably will run into some name resolution issues if using DNS "/etc/resolv.conf" for name resolution and you don't have the ipnodes parameter specified in /etc/nsswitch.conf (see man 4 nsswitch.conf)


The ipnodes parameter was introduced with the IP V6 transport in HPUX version
11.i. It is required for any system that has IP Version 6 installed. At 11.i
version 2 (11.23) and above IPv6 is installed by default. At 11i version 1
(11.11) a software update is required to install ipv6.

HP-UX 11i v1 (11.11) IPv6 is currently available as part of the Transport
Optional Upgrade Release (TOUR) 2.0 product

Available at

http://software.hp.com

Additional product information

Product #: T1306AA
Version: B.11.11.0109.5D
Software specification: HP-UX11.11




How to tell if you have IP Version 6 installed:


ls -l /dev/ip*


#ls -l /dev/ip*
crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 72 0x000013 Nov 4 11:54 /dev/ip
crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 72 0x000012 Nov 4 11:54 /dev/ip6 <---------
crw-r--r-- 1 root root 98 0x000003 Nov 4 11:55 /dev/ipauth
crw-r--r-- 1 root root 98 0x000000 Nov 4 11:55 /dev/ipl
crw-r--r-- 1 root root 98 0x000006 Nov 4 11:55 /dev/iplimit
crw-r--r-- 1 root root 98 0x000001 Nov 4 11:55 /dev/ipnat
crw-r--r-- 1 root root 98 0x000005 Nov 4 11:55 /dev/ipscan
crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 72 0x00003d Nov 4 11:54 /dev/ipseckey
crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 72 0x00003a Nov 4 11:54 /dev/ipsecpol
crw-r--r-- 1 root root 98 0x000002 Nov 4 11:55 /dev/ipstate
crw-r--r-- 1 root root 98 0x000004 Nov 4 11:55 /dev/ipsync
larry:/#

Hope this saves some time down the road for people.


There are customer viewable docs on this available.

KBRC00011918
4000032306
KBRC00016111


Todd

[Todd Whitcher]

I need to add more information to this post.

The new keyword "ipnodes" is used to specify the resolver policy for the library functions getnameinfo(3N) and getaddrinfo(3N) for both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. The existing keyword "hosts" is used to specify the resolver policy for the library functions gethostbyname() and gethostbyaddr() for IPv4 addresses.

So the use of the keywords ipnodes or hosts is dependent on which library functions the applications are using.

Todd