At 10:24 AM 8/14/02 -0700, Andy R <quadreverb@yahoo.com> wrote:

>Delivered-To: netbsd-help@netbsd.org
>Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2002 10:24:06 -0700 (PDT)
>From: Andy R <quadreverb@yahoo.com>
>Subject: RE: Can't ping 127.0.0.1
>To: Nicolas Saurbier <Nicolas.Saurbier@biodata.de>,
>        Daniel Eggert <danieleggert@mac.com>
>Cc: netbsd-help@netbsd.org
>Sender: netbsd-help-owner@netbsd.org
>
>--- Nicolas Saurbier <Nicolas.Saurbier@biodata.de> wrote:
>>
>> I also some strange behavior when I tried pinging
>> something. Try the following, delete /etc/resolv.conf
>> I know this sounds strange, but just try it.
>>
>> >--- Daniel Eggert <danieleggert@mac.com> wrote:
>> >> This is puzzling me:
>> >> 
>> >> I've done a fresh install of 1.5.2.  I set up
>> >> defaultrouter, hostname, and configured (one of my
>> >> 4) NIC.  Nothing else -- standard install without
>> >> X11.  But when I try to ping 127.0.0.1 nothing happens. 
.  .  .
>
>Hmm. Not too sure about what deleting resolv.conf
>would do in this case, but I guess it's worth a try to
>rename it... 
>
>What gets me is that 0 packets were sent, there has to
>be some meaning for that. Usually when you start
>pinging, it sends them but you just don't get anything
>back. I think this is probably the avenue you need to
>follow. Can you ping your ethernet interface using the
>IP?
>
>Any nutty entries in your /etc/hosts file or
>something?
>
>Andy

I seem to recall a similar problem which also had me 
unable to ping other machines on my non-routed local 
network.

It was solved once these machines (and localhost) were 
identified in /etc/hosts.

Even though I was attempting to "ping" using only numeric 
IP addresses, the particular implementation appears to 
have been attempting to resolve the numeric IP against a 
name.  The external nameserver had no idea about our 
internal 172.16.xxx.xxx addresses or of 127.0.0.1 loopback, 
and ping would just seem to hang and return nothing.

(This is from my personal recall of the one and only time 
I installed NetBSD -- and my memory could be wrong.  However, 
I am pretty sure I spend an afternoon bedeviled by the fact 
that the NetBSD box could not ping the other machines on 
the local network but those machines could ping the NetBSD 
box.)