/etc/hosts and SG heartbeat

[Sharon Hanrahan]

Hi,
I've got an issue with HP's Support Tools Manager where for some reason it no longer can connect to the hostname, until it's shut down and restarted and I need to find out why this happens. On the machines the /etc/hosts have been configured so that the
hostname resolves to the Serviceguard heartbeat, and it's been suggested that this may cause problems. Is this the case? Is there any reason for the heartbeat address to be in the hosts file?
Thanks for your help.

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Hi Sharon,

No since the SC configuration files use ip addresses rather than hosts. Rather than removing the entry, I would comment the line with a '#' so that you don't accidently use this address. Of course, you would also need to remove it from DNS and/or NIS if you are these for hostname resolution. If this is a hostname resolution problem, you might have a very brief /etc/hosts on each box and have /etc/nsswitch.conf set to try files first then DNS.

Regards, Clay

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi Sharon:

Define the fixed IPaddress of you host in /etc/hosts, not the floating (package) IPaddress that MC/ServiceGuard uses. I presume that your clients are using DNS or NIS anyway to connnect to the package from the outside, so this makes no difference from that perspective.

Secondly, make sure that your /etc/hosts contains a line for 'localhost' (a.k.a. 'loopback') with the address 127.0.0.1. In my experience it doesn't matter whether or not this is the first line or not.

I think that these changes will solve your problem.

...JRF...