telnet slow or not responding

[Jos de Ruiter]

I have install ux 11.11 with DNS and a gateway outside. so I can ftp to any site and af course telnet.
But when I telnet a local host name, the respond is unknow host. I have create /etc/nsswitch.conf file with "hosts:files" but now a can't telnet outside the network. It is a problem with DNS and the rest.
But I want use then both.

[Patrick Wallek]

You need to modify your /etc/nsswitch.conf file so that both files and dns will be used. The hosts line should look something like this:

hosts: files [NOTFOUND=continue] dns

This can be modified on the fly, no reboot or anything else is required. Just modify the file, save it, and you should be good to go.

[steven Burgess_2]

Hi Jos

A little expansion on Patrick's reply

The entry in nsswitch is related to as the 'fall back mechanism'

When you send a query to the lookup resource always yields one of 4 results

SUCCESS - source found requested entry
UNAVAIL - Source is not configured
NOTFOUND - source responded "no such entry"
TRYAGAIN - server not responding

When the resolver receives one of these responses you can configure it to react in 2 ways

continue - Try the next source in the list
return - quit searching

Lets say we have the following in /etc/nsswitch

hosts: dns files

The above says that the resolver should try DNS first - SUCCESS = return else use the /etc/hosts files

As per Patrick's example - he is more explicitly defining the fallback mechanism

hosts : files [NOTFOUND=continue] dns

With the above entry , if the host is not found using /etc/hosts then the resolver will consult dns

If these actions are not specified the resolver uses the following defaults

SUCCESS=return
NOTFOUND=return
UNAVAIL=continue
TRYAGIN=continue

Therefore the UNAVAIL and TRYAGAIN lines ensure that the other specified resource is used

Hope this helps

Steve