[TUHS] 4.3 BSD network name resolution

Clem Cole clemc at ccc.com
Sun Jan 30 08:59:02 AEST 2022


Isn't time wonderful .....   4.2 and 4.3BSD predates the release of bind,
which was separately sent into the wild..

The good news is that you can certainly get things working with a static
host table.   And frankly for a simulated system, the network is likely to
be very small and you are unlikely to need more modern services like a
browser with URLs et al.   That said, the early bind will work on 4.2/4.3
without a lot of hassle, as that's the system that it was developed.
Except .....   the problem is the >>client side<< is used all over the
place AND that needs to know you a DNS.

My suggestion is getting 4.3 running up with a very small (static) host
table.   Then take on the DNS.   The resolv library (client code) is likely
to have a lot of static calls to the old (non-DNS based) versions of
gethostbyXXX and the like.   If you bring bind over, you'r probably going
to have to do a full rebuild and relink , reinstall of applications space
clients use the DNS, not the static tables.

Have fun.

Clem

On Sat, Jan 29, 2022 at 4:49 PM Will Senn <will.senn at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm working through 4.3BSD setup and configuration and came across this:
>
>
> "There is no equivalent service for network names yet. The full host and
> network name databases are normally derived from a file retrieved from
> Internet Network Information Center at SRI... use gettable to retrieve the
> NIC host database and htable to convert it to the format used by the
> libraries."
>
>
> Does this mean I should expect functionality like resolv.conf and ping
> yahoo.com not to work in 4.3, or by some miracle is gettable still a
> functional system?
>
>
> Will
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
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