Hi, all.

Well... I figured out my routing problem. <sheepish grin>

Here's what was happening, for those of you involved in the high drama
of my routing exploits:

The NetBSD/i386 system that was having problems with its default route
had (accidentally!) an /etc/resolv.conf that pointed off-site. That's
why I could do netstat -rn, but not netstat -r. I noticed that I could
have the default route enabled and still telnet in when the NetBSD/mac68k
system was connected, and thus in possession of the pppd-controlled
default route. I also noticed modem activity corresponding with the name
lookup for each route in the i386's routing tables. tcpdump to the rescue
- I started watching the SLIP link between the two NetBSD boxes, and I
noticed that something was trying to get stuff from an outside name
server. Doh!

To make an embarassingly long story short, zapping the /etc/resolv.conf
file on the i386 forces it to use its /etc/hosts, which is the desired
behaviour, since the link to the outside world is only part-time.

And everyone lived happily ever after. :)

The moral of this story: Um... If someone figures *this* out, I'd love
to hear an explanation. Somehow, "make sure you're not trying to use
a name server that's unreachable" seems too narrow to be a good moral.

Later...

-- 
Mason Loring Bliss...mason@acheron.middleboro.ma.us...www.webtrek.com/mason
"In the drowsy dark cave of the mind dreams build their nest with fragments
 dropped from day's caravan."--Rabindranath Tagore...awake ? sleep : dream;