Hi folks,

After searching the net for information I have finally found out that SunOS 4.1.4 has an issue with DNS (basically doesn't work without NIS or a patched resolver) The following is the thread that discusses the issue:

> Has anyone successfully gotten their statically linked FWTK-1.3 proxies
> working on a SunOS 4.1.4 platform *NOT* running NIS?

Yes, using BIND library or libresolv+.

> Our recent effort
> at building such a firewall makes me think the SunOS 4.1.4 resolver may
> be seriously broken (i.e., no DNS support), as compared to SunOS 4.1.3.
>
> After a fresh reload of the OS from CDROM, networking apps like ping and
> telnet can only resolve what's in the local /etc/hosts, despite having a
> properly configured /etc/resolv.conf pointing to an internal nameserver.
> Well, properly configured for SunOS 4.1.3, anyway; we don't have the Sun
> Release Notes for SunOS 4.1.4, and there's always a chance this is some
> sort of new Sun feature, I suppose (hint, hint...).
>
> An 'nslookup' from the firewall finds the internal nameserver without any
> problems. The internal nameserver forwards to the DNS on the firewall (a
> split DNS setup), which works; the firewall's DNS forwards to the external
> nameservers, which also works. Changing resolv.conf to point to the local
> nameserver (on the firewall) doesn't fix things.
>
> We snooped the inside net, and saw no DNS packets from the firewall to the
> inside nameserver when the resolver should have been sending to it; when a
> name was checked using nslookup from the firewall, we saw the traffic we'd
> expect. Starting up a ypbind on the firewall (for test purposes only) got
> us full resolvability (the NIS master goes to the internal DNS).

As far as I know, SunOS 4.1.3 had no more DNS support than 4.1.4. Either
your 4.1.3 was running NIS, either its shared libs had been rebuilt with a new
resolver. What you describe is exactly the same as with stock 4.1.3.

> Anyway, to solve our problems, we replaced the SunOS resolver and DNS with
> BIND 4.9.2, rebuilt the shared C library (but not libc.a), and rebuilt the
> proxies with dynamic links (static links still don't work, obviously).

Are you sure that you linked the proxies with your new libresolv.a ? They
should work statically linked as well.

> We now have both Sun and TIS apps on the firewall talking to the internal DNS
> nameserver.

Congratulations.

> Any comments/suggestions/opinions/facts would be welcome. Thanks,

I personally prefer to use libresolv+ rather than BIND library because it
allows to search hosts both in /etc/hosts and DNS. It's sometimes more
comfortable than relying entirely on DNS.

I thank all you for your help in trying to resolve the issue.

Don