network is unreachable

[Barry Margolin]

In article <7k937a$oj7$0 at 206.231.153.173>,
Ron Bombard  <ronb.ntextile at netheaven.com> wrote:
>Greetings!
>
>I'm running Redhat 5.2 linux, with BIND 8.1.2.  The nameserver is
>configured as a cache-only server.  I connect to my ISP with PPP.
>
>Following a DNS-Howto, I was trying to use my ISP's nameserver for
>lookups on the internet, and use my hostfile for local lookups.  should
>be easy right? huh!
>
>When I try to send mail to another host on my network, sendmail gives
>the error: Deferred: network is unreachable

That indicates a routing problem between your machine and the destination
machine.  This is quite unusual if they're both on the same network.

>When I do a nslookup on any host on our network (including local host),
>I get the error: 
>*** Can't find server name for address 198.69.28.2: No response from
>server
>*** Can't find server name for address 198.69.28.3: No response from
>server
>*** Default servers are not available

It sounds like DNS lookups aren't causing your PPP connection to come up.

>My /etc/host file has all my local hosts in it.

I don't think sendmail uses this, because it has to look up MX records,
which don't exist in /etc/hosts.

>Now, everything works fine as far as when I'm connected to my ISP. I can
>browse the net, send out external email, do nslookups of anyone. except
>local hosts.  
>
>I can ping all my local hosts, though.

Ping will use /etc/hosts because it just needs an IP address.  Mail is
special because of MX records.

-- 
Barry Margolin, barmar at bbnplanet.com
GTE Internetworking, Powered by BBN, Burlington, MA
*** DON'T SEND TECHNICAL QUESTIONS DIRECTLY TO ME, post them to newsgroups.
Please DON'T copy followups to me -- I'll assume it wasn't posted to the group.