/etc/resolv.conf
contains a nameserver that is alive (as reported by theping
command)host
ornslookup
is able to resolvegoogle.com
$ host google.com google.com has address 74.125.228.3 google.com has address 74.125.228.4 ... $ nslookup google.com ... Non-authorative answer: Name: google.com Address: 74.125.228.0 Name: google.com Address: 74.125.228.1 ..
ping
ortelnet
is not able to resolvegoogle.com
$ ping google.com ping: unknown host google.com $ telnet google.com google.com: node name or service name not known
3 Answers
It seems ping
and telnet
were unable to resolve hostnames, because they were not querying the configured DNS server (host
and nslookup
seem to be using different DNS querying code), the solution is to:
Overwrite /etc/nsswitch.conf
with /etc/nsswitch.dns
:
cp /etc/nsswitch.dns /etc/nsswitch.conf
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2Ideally you should copy /etc/nsswitch.dns over to /etc/nsswitch.conf, this is the normal and documented way to set up your system to use DNS, among creating the /etc/resolv.conf Jun 10, 2013 at 15:00
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It also depends how you installed Solaris. If at the interactive installer, or in sysidcfg, you specify DNS, nsswitch.conf should already be configured properly. Jun 10, 2013 at 15:54
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@JamesO'Gorman Since I have very little experience with Solaris, I admit that maybe I missed it during the installation. But still it is really surprising that this is not set by default. Jun 10, 2013 at 16:48
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@AdamSiemion keep in mind that many of Solaris' largest customers are closed environments where DNS may not necessarily be used, and instead NIS holds sway. (or LDAP sometimes). Sun used to focus most of it's energy on it's top 50 customers. DNS stuff was added for the rest of their customers, but not made the default, because revenue from the top 50 > the rest. Oracle likely plays a similar game. Jun 11, 2013 at 13:01
Adam, you do not tell us what version of Solaris you're using.
All host lookup on Solaris goes through the Solaris Naming Service daemon. The only exception is nslookup
which does a direct DNS query against a DNS server. The Naming Service daemon basically acts as a cache of naming information. Other operating systems have similar services. The Solaris Naming Service is configured in the /etc/nsswitch.conf
file.
I really, really hope you are on an older version, such as Solaris 10 or before. Otherwise you've now manually edited a file you are no longer supposed to edit : the /etc/nsswitch.conf
file.
Anyway, lets say you are on Solaris 10 or older:
Your /etc/nsswitch.conf
should have an entry like this:
hosts: files dns
This tells the Solaris Naming Service that hosts should be looked up first in the local file (i.e. /etc/hosts
) and then in DNS. You can of course also only have "dns" here but people will normally want it so that /etc/hosts
can override what is in DNS.
You may now have to restart the naming service daemon:
svcadm restart /system/name-service-cache
You can always verify your naming service setup with the Solaris getent
command:
getent hosts google.com
The getent
command verifies that the Solaris Naming Service works as you expect. You cannot use nslookup
to verify this.
If your are on Solaris 11 then you can use nolan600's answer to this question. The getent
command also applies to Solaris 11.
Hope you can use some of this.
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/usr/bin/host
is another exception as it's a direct DNS client and does not use the Solaris name services.– alancJul 14, 2017 at 23:01
root@solaris:~# svccfg -s name-service/switch svc:/system/name-service/switch> setprop config/host = "files dns" svc:/system/name-service/switch> listprop config config application config/default astring files config/value_authorization astring solaris.smf.value.name-service.switch config/printer astring "user files" config/host astring "files dns" svc:/system/name-service/switch> exit root@solaris11:~# svcadm refresh name-service/switch
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you can also update the DNS if there's still an issue solaris 10&11 Jul 13, 2017 at 12:29
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1Can you explain your answer? Pasting some code do not make it good answer Jul 13, 2017 at 12:37