Re: Configuration router / gateway use

[will trillich <will@serensoft.com>]

On Thu, Sep 21, 2000 at 10:44:56PM +0200, Stefan Bellon wrote:
> In article <[🔎] 20000921145255.E19362@mail.serensoft.com>,
>    will trillich <will@serensoft.com> wrote:
> > On Tue, Sep 19, 2000 at 10:40:45AM +0200, Stefan Bellon wrote:
> 
> [snip]
> 
> > hmm. maybe
> > 	# apt-get install ipmasq
> > and then after
> > 	# ifconfig
> > shows your ports and connections are fat dumb and happy (alive and
> > working)
> > 	# ipmasq
> > ?
> 
> > just a thought...
> 
> Thanks for the suggestion. I'll have a look what it does.
> 
> In the meantime I've solved the problem by trial and error. I found
> that it was the DNS which wasn't working. I use the inbuild DNS server
> of the ISDN router, so I looked at its statistics and found addresses
> like www.altavista.com.local.net and so on, i.e. local.net appended to
> all addresses. So I realised why queries by host names didn't work
> whereas the IP ones did (I hadn't realised that in my previous post).
> Then I found that the entry "search local.net" in /etc/resolv.conf was
> causing this behaviour. Since I removed it, it works.
> 
> But in the meantime somebody else told me that the "search local.net"
> /should/ be present.
> 
> Could somebody please explain to me what this "search" option in
> /etc/resolv.conf does?

yes. someone can. but they're not here right now.

so here's my understanding, which is probably 173 degrees off:

if you ask your domain server to resolve "bubba" and it's got a
resolve.conf like
	search high.and.low
it'll try to find
	bubba.high.and.low
	bubba.and.low
	bubba.low
	bubba
(i think, but don't let that stop you from finding out otherwise.)

my main site is
	dontUthink.com
and i've got it listed as 'search' in resolv.conf.

now i can say
	ping www
or
	lynx www
and i get
	www.dontUthink.com
right away, in both cases. very nice for us lazy types.

from 'man resolve.conf' (yes, some config files have their own
manpages as i was delighted to learn):
       search Search list for host-name lookup.  The search  list
              is  normally determined from the local domain name;
              by default, it contains only the local domain name.
              This  may  be changed by listing the desired domain
              search  path  following  the  search  keyword  with
              spaces or tabs separating the names.  Most resolver
              queries will be attempted using each  component  of
              the  search  path  in  turn until a match is found.
              Note  that  this  process  may  be  slow  and  will
              generate  a  lot  of network traffic if the servers
              for the listed domains  are  not  local,  and  that
              queries will time out if no server is available for
              one of the domains.

              The search list is currently limited to six domains
              with a total of 256 characters.