Henry B. Hotz wrote:
> 
> At 5:32 PM 7/20/97, Colin Wood wrote:
> >xiamin wrote:
> >
> >> On Sun, 20 Jul 1997, Colin Wood wrote:
> >> > file.  All you need to do is create the sn0 interface file and give it an
> >> > IP address in some way.  So, you'll wind up with:
> >> Hmmmm, I have neither of those, on the howto page, I can find the way to
> >> do hostname.ae0, but as far as I can see, you just do
> >> inet name netmask
> >> But you don't set the ip address...
> >
> >True, although I think you can.  I believe that it uses something like the
> >resolver to map the IP address to the name you give on the line above.
> 
> I don't know if ifconfig uses the resolver code or not, but you can't use
> DNS to resolve a name before you have your network interfaces configured.
> The name has to be in /etc/hosts.

The reason I didn't just say "the name must be in /etc/hosts" is that I
believe that you can use NIS as well as /etc/hosts, although I could be
wrong.  But, yes, unless you are running your own name service and happen
to configure the loopback interface early, there's no way to use DNS to
configure your network interfaces.

Later.

Colin