Hi all,

I am having a very basic networking problem that I can't figure out.

The machine's hostname is 'bluespacedb' (as you can see from the shell output below) and I am using DHCP to get an ip address. As my DHCP server (an SMC barricade) is not doing DNS, I added the ip address and the hostname in /etc/hosts.

I could then ping the local machine, but the problem is that host does not work.

I verified that /etc/host.conf is set up to use the hosts file first. As far as i know that's all it takes to do dns lookups.

Any help is appreciated.

[root@bluespacedb etc]# hostname
bluespacedb

[root@bluespacedb etc]# more host.conf
order hosts,bind

[root@bluespacedb etc]# more hosts
# Do not remove the following line, or various programs
# that require network functionality will fail.
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost
192.168.2.112 bluespacedb.localdomain bluespacedb
192.168.2.105 thunder
192.168.2.124 sonya

[root@bluespacedb etc]# ping -c 2 bluespacedb
PING bluespacedb (192.168.2.112) from 192.168.2.112 : 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from bluespacedb (192.168.2.112): icmp_seq=0 ttl=255 time=241 usec
64 bytes from bluespacedb (192.168.2.112): icmp_seq=1 ttl=255 time=8 usec

--- bluespacedb ping statistics ---
2 packets transmitted, 2 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/mdev = 0.008/0.124/0.241/0.117 ms

[root@bluespacedb etc]# host bluespacedb
Host bluespacedb. not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)

[root@bluespacedb etc]# ifconfig
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0F:1F:F9:AE:BA
inet addr:192.168.2.112 Bcast:192.168.2.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST NOTRAILERS RUNNING MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:24194 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:1429 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
RX bytes:1786725 (1.7 Mb) TX bytes:244139 (238.4 Kb)
Interrupt:53 Base address:0xdcc0 Memory:dfbe0000-dfc00000

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:24 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:24 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:1904 (1.8 Kb) TX bytes:1904 (1.8 Kb)

I think that "host" is specifically designed to use a DNS server (by default, the one listed in /etc/resolv.conf). If the ping command is resolving the name of the system correctly I wouldn't worry about it.

have you placed your host name in /etc/sysconfig/network

HOSTNAME='bluespacedb'

also if you are running dhcp you need

/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0

DHCP_HOSTNAME='bluespacedb'

finally in /etc/dhclient-eth0.conf

send host-name "bluespacedb";

Hope this helps.

Not so sure if I need not worry about it. I ran into the problem while I was running oracle's database configuration assistant and it said: "Thrown when the IP address of host cannot be determined". I am assuming it is using the host command as that's the one that is not working.

Regarding /etc/sysconfig/netword and /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0:
I did found posts like that on several sites but I have no such directories. I am installing on RedHat Linux Advanced Server 2.1.

If you are running a test server, then why not use a static address and set up a DNS service on that system ?

Oracle is almost an operating system in it's own right...I wouldn't be suprised if they don't use the standard functions for lookups.

Ok, I managed to use static ip address and setup a dns server on the machine - thanks to my collegue Andrew ;-)

ping and host are now both working. Oracle has installed without the ackward "Thrown when the IP address of host cannot be determined" error.

Thank you all.

Rudi.