every other remsh fails

[David Lockwood]

I have a server running 11.11. When I remsh to any other machine (that is configured for access) then I get a 50% failure rate e.g.

remsh machine_name ls ... work OK

immediatly after

remsh machine_name ls ... fails with remshd: Login incorrect.

Both the server and client machines are on the same network, I am not crossing any subnets. I get no messages in /var/adm/syslog/syslogs and I have just performed a patch assesment on the server and updated all the patches.

Can anyone help ?

[harry d brown jr]

Possibly a DNS issue. How are you resolving system names?

Try ping machine_name or telnet machine_name a few times to make sure you are hitting the right server.

live free or die
harry

[Jeff Schussele]

Hi,

Besides DNS this could be due to duplicate IPs out on the network.
Try pinging the IP & see if you get duplicate responses. If so, one of them needs to change.

Rgds,
Jeff

[Jeff_Traigle]

Yeah... sounds like a possible DNS issue. I know in the environment I'm working in the Windows Domain Controllers are multihomed and the hostname resolves to two different IP addresses... one reachable by the other servers and one for backups... we have a 50/50 shot of resolving to the reachable address relying on DNS.

[RAC_1]

Post the following.

nslookup machine_name;remsh machine_name ls

immediatly after

nslookup machine_name;remsh machine_name ls

Anil

[David Lockwood]

I did think it may be DNS related but a ping works every time with a 0ms response. I have modified the /etc/nsswitch.conf so I only look at the /etc/hosts file. Any client that I configure for remote access from the server suffers the same fate !!

[David Lockwood]

I have tried

nslookup machine_name; remsh machine_name ls

followed by

nslookup machine_name; remsh machine_name ls

and get the same results from the nslookup command both times. There are no reported duplicate IP addresses from our network monitoring equipment.

[harry d brown jr]

Try remsh using the IP address a couple of times to see if you get the same results.

What is machine_name server using to resolve DNS ? May be it is the source of the problem? Also, check the login scripts for weirdness.

At first I suspected that your DNS was using a round robin - which it still might be doing.

also, try issuing an "arp -a" before and after your "remsh machine_name who" a couple of times. Check to make sure the MAC address is the same.

live free or die
harry

[David Lockwood]

I have tried a remsh using the IP address and get the same result. The MAC address returned from an arp -a for this IP address is always the same. I have tried other IP addresses and get the same results.

[David Lockwood]

Thanks for everybodys help. It turns out that someone here is installing and AD domain and had put two reverse name lookups for this server in the DNS files, each for different domains. The problem is now fixed.