Re: (long) tcpd compilation options and forced reverse lookup

[Edouard Lafargue <edouard.lafargue@london.omnes.slb.com>]

Sorry about the previous empty response... Typed the wrong key, keyboard shortcuts can be as dangerous as mouse clicks...

  To get back to the problem:

  * Putting "search ." in /etc/resolv.conf solves the problem of telnet/ftp/etc doing DNS lookups even for hosts present in the /etc/hosts file.

  * It does not solve the other part of the problem, which is that daemons using tcp wrappers/tcpd trigger reverse lookups for every host connection, not only for unknown hosts. In short tcp wrappers are compiled to be paranoid for every host, known or not ! This is a -default- compilation option of tcp wrappers (-DPARANOID) which in my opinion should not be enabled: forcing lookups at every connection should be a decision left to the administrator. An administrator can always put "ALL:PARANOID"  in /etc/hosts.deny.

  Is the package maintainer of tcpd listening on this list ? What's his opinion ? I'll try to get and compile the source package of tcpd without this -DPARANOID option and see if it improves things...

Regards,

Edouard