Shane Devereaux writes:
> Today I have had a contractor in to install Unispool on the HP3000. It
> would that while Unispool has been configured and now works the HP3000
> now does not appear as one of my DNS clients. The contractor then told
> me he had to alter my hosts.net.sys file from emu.mudgee.nsw.gov.au to
> hp3000.mudgee.shire as this was the node name set up in nmmgr. Only
> after he made the change did Unispool begin to operate from a client PC.
>
> I asked if we could alter the node name in nmmgr to
> emu.mudgee.nsw.gov.au and then alter the hosts file again but his
> comment was
>
> 1. Changing the node name was not something that is as simple as what i
> suggested...i really do not know any more than that comment

Changing the node name IS simple.  It's the relationship of the NMMGR node
name field to DNS that's complicated.

> 2. Even if he did change it the HP3000 would only take three classes (
> is that the right term ) so we would finish with emu.mudgee.nsw and not
> the complete domain.

You're right that the NMMGR node name can only be a three part name.  *BUT*
this isn't the exact name that's used by DNS!

> I am a little confused about all this as I do want Unispool ( i've paid
> for the bloody product now anyway ) but i want my DNS client back to as
> I am still working on the sendmail project that some of you may remember
> helping me with. I hope i have been clear as it is not all too clear to
> me.

Back in the pre-Internet dark times, the NMMGR node name field was only used
by HP's Probe protocol, IIRC (but I've never used HP Probe here).  Life was
simple and proprietary.

Then when Internet DNS resolution and POSIX had to be supported, things got
complicated.

In the POSIX shell, if you do uname -n (or from the CI, :xeq uname.hpbin.sys -n)
it returns the first part of the NMMGR node name field.  There is also a
uname() function that returns the same information.

But uname just returns a one part name.  How do you get the rest of the DNS
domains?  NMMGR won't let you specify more than a three part name, so the
NMMGR node name field isn't suitable at all for specifying true DNS names (that
frequently exceed three parts) and shouldn't be used that way.

The domain part of your machine's DNS name needs to be specified on the "domain"
statement of the /etc/resolv.conf file (which must be a symlink pointing to
/SYS/NET/RESLVCNF).

So Sendmail and probably other POSIX programs construct your full DNS name by
taking uname -n (the FIRST PART ONLY of the NMMGR node name field), and then
concatenating it with whatever you specify on the "domain" statement of
/etc/resolv.conf.

Now you have a full DNS name.  But does it exist within all of your DNS servers?
Does your firewall even allow your HP3000 to talk to DNS servers?  Do your
DNS servers have *BOTH* an A record (name->IP address) and a PTR record (IP
address->name) for your HP3000's full DNS name?

Sendmail is VERY picky about all of this.  If you don't have everything set
up exactly right, Sendmail will behave in a very rude and cryptic manner (as
well as probably just hang).  These kinds of DNS issues are the number one
problem that people have when installing Sendmail.

Now I've never used Unispool, but I strongly doubt it's using HP Probe protocol
to resolve machine names.  So the only part of the NMMGR node name field that
Unispool might care about is the first part as discussed above.

IMO you should be able to use emu.mudgee.nsw.gov.au in HOSTS.NET.SYS.  You
should also verify that /etc/hosts exists as a symlink pointing to
/SYS/NET/HOSTS.  I would change your NMMGR node name field to be
emu.mudgee.shire.  Make sure the following statement exists in /etc/resolv.conf
aka /SYS/NET/RESLVCNF:

domain mudgee.nsw.gov.au

I assume you've specified one or more "nameserver" statements in resolv.conf
that list the IP addresses of all of the DNS servers you want your 3000 to use
to resolve DNS names.  Make sure that *all* of these nameservers will return
both A and PTR records for emu.mudgee.nsw.gov.au, as well as A and PTR records
for each of the Unispool network printers.
--
Mark Bixby                      E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Coast Community College Dist.   Web: http://www.cccd.edu/~markb/
District Information Services   1370 Adams Ave, Costa Mesa, CA, USA 92626-5429
Technical Support               Voice: +1 714 438-4647
"You can tune a file system, but you can't tune a fish." - tunefs(1M)