peiffer@umn-cs.CS.UMN.EDU (Tim J. Peiffer) (02/12/89)
I phoned Encore about an annex problem quite some time ago. It seemed that
no matter what I did, I couldn't get the annex to respond to my nameserver.
The problem appeared to be related to the nameserver and not the annex.
Since the problem was not serious, I decided to "put it on the back burner,"
at least until I knew better how the nameserver operated. Since then, I have
been doing some studying and made final changes in configuration, and I
thought that I'd share the results.
The annex would easily build host tables when I set the option to build
via rwhod. (i.e. na command: set annex rwhod Y) It also appeared to
run well under an ien-116 nameserver. Since our site chose to run with
BIND, both of these options were shut off. I found that the annex would
not send any requests to the nameserver unless the full internet name was
used (x.y.umn.edu), or unless it ended with a dot. The dot, according
to the RFC's instructs the server to look at the name as fully qualified,
without needing further expansion.
For example, in our domain, in contacting host dg, the hostname would not
be found. However, requesting a fully qualified name such as dg.cs.umn.edu,
or sun.com., the name request would be served properly, and a connection
would be made. As far as I could tell, requesting host dg SHOULD work,
but it didn't.
The solution was in the hosts and hosts.rev files for the nameserver.
The line $ORIGIN site.sub-dom.domain. must be included in both files, or
a default trailer ( .cs.umn.edu) would not be supplied to any name request.
Also, as far as the annex is concerned, it did not know it's own internet
name unless the hosts.rev file included the entire IP address. Therefore,
a connection from an annex to any unix host would be seen as coming from an
internet NUMBER rather than an internet NAME.
What follows is a configuration excerpt for the annex, followed by a sample
BIND hosts/hosts.rev file that will work.
Peiffer, Tim (TP63) peiffer@UMN-CS.CS.UMN.EDU
University of Minnesota
Computer Science Laboratories
Minneapolis, MN 55455
(612) 625-0876
# annex 128.101.224.40
echo setting annex parameters
set annex pref_load_addr 128.101.224.1
set annex name_server_1 bind
set annex pref_name1_addr 128.101.224.1
set annex name_server_2 bind
set annex pref_name2_addr 128.101.55.1
set annex host_table_size 64
set annex rwhod N
set annex min_unique_hostnames Y
$ORIGIN cs.umn.edu. << Note: important!! (The dot also!)
;;;
;;; $Header:
;;;
@ IN SOA umn-cs.cs.umn.edu. peiffer.umn-cs.cs.umn.edu. (
8807301520 ; Serial
86400 ; Refresh, 1 day
3600 ; Retry
604800 ; Expire, 7 days
3600 ) ; Minimum
IN NS umn-cs.cs.umn.edu.
@ IN A 128.101.224.1
1.224 IN PTR umn-cs.cs.umn.edu.
40.224.101.128 IN PTR tc1.cs.umn.edu.
$ORIGIN cs.umn.edu. <<< Note: important here too!
@ IN SOA umn-cs.cs.umn.edu. peiffer.umn-cs.cs.umn.edu. (
8807301520 ; Serial
86400 ; Refresh, 1 day
3600 ; Retry
604800 ; Expire, 7 days
3600 ) ; Minimum
;Nameservers
IN NS umn-cs.cs.umn.edu.
@ IN A 128.101.224.1
;Hosts
loopback IN A 127.0.0.1
me IN CNAME loopback
localhost IN CNAME loopback
lb IN CNAME loopback
tc1 IN A 128.101.224.40
IN HINFO AnnexII None
IN UINFO "MI:peiffer@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu"
IN UINFO "HL:CSci - terminal pool"
IN WKS 128.101.224.40 TCP ( Telnet )
MX 0 umn-cs
cs-tc1 IN CNAME tc1