Newsgroups: comp.mail.sendmail
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!uunet!stan!kucharsk
From: kucharsk@solbourne.com (William Kucharski)
Subject: Re: More problems with sendmail/IDA and DECnet
Message-ID: <1991Jun11.223410.4007@solbourne.com>
Organization: Solbourne Computer, Inc., Longmont, CO
References: <1991Jun11.173526.15436@njitgw.njit.edu> <1991Jun11.182958.18722@mp.cs.niu.edu> <kre.676674893@mundamutti.cs.mu.OZ.AU>
Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1991 22:34:10 GMT

In article <kre.676674893@mundamutti.cs.mu.OZ.AU> kre@cs.mu.oz.au (Robert Elz) writes:
 >rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
 >Its just that there is no excuse at all for not using the DNS exclusively
 >when its available.  What's more, if the DNS doesn't answer (or doesn't answer
 >soon enough), or says "host unknown", or "name exists but no data",
 >its simply wrong to go and try some other lookup method.  Only if the DNS
 >is not operating at all (ie: during boot) should anything else be used,
 >and that should be /etc/hosts, which need contain mappings for just those
 >few hosts needed to mount filesystems to get the DNS started.

I don't know about this.  I've seen more than a few systems that want to keep
internal network details from the Internet yet which run DNS.  It would be
real handy to be able to query the network directly for information on remote
hosts without publishing your hosts to the network; e.g. use /etc/hosts for
local host information; if it's a host in any other domain go check with DNS. 

The machinations you have to go through to do this otherwise are not
(at least conceptually) pretty...
-- 
| William Kucharski, Solbourne Computer, Inc.     | Opinions expressed above
| Internet:   kucharsk@Solbourne.COM	          | are MINE alone, not those
| uucp:	...!{boulder,sun,uunet}!stan!kucharsk     | of Solbourne...
| Snail Mail: 1900 Pike Road, Longmont, CO  80501 | "It's Night 9 With D2 Dave!"
