[FX.php List] Somewhat [Off Topic] How to tell your local computers which is a domain-named server

[Kevin Futter]

On 25/5/07 4:47 AM, "Troy Meyers" <tcmeyers at troymeyers.com> wrote:

> Kevin and dan,
> 
> Thanks for your suggestions. I haven't had success yet, though.
> 
> Kevin:
> 
> I did as you suggested with NetInfo Manager, very easy to do. I tried both the
> ./local and ../network flavors without luck though. I still get the same
> message in the browser. In each case I tried the "lookupd -flushcache" in
> Terminal, as well as the menu item "Restart Local NetInfo domains" in NetInfo
> manager, quitting and relaunching Safari, and lastly also restarting the
> machine.
> 
> Maybe I'm going about this wrong... what computer am I supposed to be doing
> this on? I did it on my desktop where I'd be doing the testing from. I did not
> do it on the FMSA machine.

As Dan said, it's the local machine you want to be doing this on.

 
> 
> dan:
> 
> I didn't really get to try your method. I wasn't able to find the "hosts" file
> in a directory "etc". What's the full path? I thought I searched everywhere,
> but maybe it's secret. Obviously I'm pretty green about editing system files.

I guess it won't surprise you now if I tell you that it's a hidden file in a
hidden directory! An alternative to the Terminal route is to use a utility
such as Tinkertool or Onyx to set the Finder to show hidden files and
folders. You can then navigate into these areas as normal. Hosts is just a
plain text file, and can be edited with text editor (permissions may be an
issue though).

Alternatively, you can open it directly with editors such as BBEdit or
TextWrangler, both of which know about hidden files.

However, it doesn't appear to be fixing your problem - at least, the NetInfo
approach hasn't. It could be that the domain is incorrect and needs to be
something other than ../network, but I have no idea what.

One other thing to consider is your lookup order. If DNS comes before NI (or
FF in the case of a hosts file), then your local lookup will never get a
chance to resolve. You can check with this command:

lookupd -configuration

The top entry in the config print out should look something like this:

LookupOrder: Cache FF DNS NI DS
_config_name: Host Configuration

This is from my MacBook Pro, which is set to use cache first (which is why
you need to flush it after making changes), then FF (flat file - hosts),
then DNS, then NI (NetInfo). I'm not even sure what the last one is.

Anyway, in order to get the NetInfo approach working, you'd have to move NI
before DNS in the lookup order. Hosts would probably work in the example
above, since FF is set before DNS. The reason it fails at the moment is
because there's already a valid external DNS entry for the server you're
trying to resolve, so the lookup process ends there. If you had no external
DNS entry, it would fall through to NI and resolve at that point. This is
how I use it for resolving local vhosts, as they have no valid external DNS
entry.

I hope all that makes sense! I can't remember off the top of my head how to
change the lookup order, but if you want to give it a go, I've got notes
somewhere.

-- 
Kevin Futter
Webmaster, St. Bernard's College
http://www.sbc.melb.catholic.edu.au/



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