[TUHS] Directory services in early Unix networks?

[Larry McVoy]

On Wed, Nov 07, 2018 at 12:15:32PM -0500, Dan Cross wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 7, 2018 at 4:05 AM <arnold at skeeve.com> wrote:
> When DNS came along, it became
> > a matter of editing /etc/nsswitch.conf to include dns as one of the
> > options along with files and yp/nis.  I think the average user didn't
> > see any big difference since all the apps (ftp, telnet) just went
> > through gethostbyname().
> 
> This doesn't mesh with my memory. I recall building BIND from source and
> having to rebuild network programs (e.g. on 4.3 on the RT or VAXen) to pick
> up the new version of libresolv.a, and hacking the resolver library into
> libc.so on Suns. I remember using resolv.conf fairly early on, but my
> memory is that nsswitch.conf came later (Solaris 2.x era?). 

Yeah, this is right, I remember doing this as well and I worked at Sun
at that point.  It was a pain.