Some users have noticed a slow startup of the BNET utilities "remsh", "rlogin", and even "ping." Suspicions were that this was related to the utilities' failure to make contact with the "named" daemon, thereby causing a timeout before continuing. When this daemon was turned on in "/etc/inittab", it did not appear when the system reached the appropriate run state.
Note that a line in the "inittab" references "/etc/named.boot", a file that does not exist in A/UX as shipped. If you create "/etc/named.boot" as a zero-sized file and restart the system, the "named" daemon runs and networking is much faster. For example, the "ping" program responds almost immediately instead of after five to six seconds. The same applies to "remsh", "rlogin", "rcp", and others.
There are three workarounds for this problem:
Method 1
--------
1. Choose one system on the network to act as the "name" server.
2. Create a zero-sized file called "/etc/named.boot" on that system.
3. Enable the "named" daemon from within "/etc/inittab".
4. On all other systems on the network, edit the "/etc/resolv.conf"
file to include:
nameserver <Ethernet address of above machine in dot notation>
5. Restart all network utilities that are running.
Method 2
--------
1. Turn on the "named" daemon on all systems on the network.
2. Create a zero-sized file called "/etc/named.boot" on each system as
previously described.
The second method is slightly less efficient, but may be the better choice because every system on the network has a "name" server and does not have to rely on one system to be present.
Method 3
--------
Methods 1 and 2 sound good, but neither includes any "name" server database. You would do well to build a "name" server with real name database into your network.
The reason network activities like "rlogin", "ftp", "remsh" ran slower was because the "name" server was either down or not running, and the libraries (resolver software) that query the domain name server already are built in to A/UX. Because of this, hostname or address queries from a user process are:
a. First sent to the name server.
b. If the information is not found, the query is sent to the Yellow
Pages.
c. If the information is not found, the query is sent to the local
"/etc/hosts" file.
d. If the information is not found, the query fails.
For additional information about Name Servers, refer to the A/UX Network System Administration manual section on "Setting Up the Name Server".
Article Change History:
24 Aug 1994 - Reviewed and updated.
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