[TriLUG] RH networking mis-configured

[Robert Dale]

On Thu, 19 Dec 2002, Chris Merrill wrote:

> I have a Java application, which on one particular RH 7.3 machine,
> is having a network problem.  The machine seems to be completely
> operational (the network is, anyway) - but my app is throwing an
> UnknownHostException when I call InetAddress().getLocalHost().

Java checks /etc/nsswitch.conf and uses the first method available.
By default on many systems, this file is configured as "hosts: files dns".
"files" is basically /etc/hosts.  So, if your IP-host mapping isn't in 
that file, it will fail on name resoultion.  You can fix it one of two 
ways:

a) add you ip-host map to /etc/hosts
b) edit nsswitch.conf to "hosts: dns files"

if you're using DHCP, you'll probably want to do option b.

-- 
Robert Dale