Subject: Re: telnet 0: No address associated with hostname
To: None <tech-net@netbsd.org>
From: Greg A. Woods <woods@weird.com>
List: tech-net
Date: 07/29/2000 11:54:24
[ On Saturday, July 29, 2000 at 12:34:04 (+0900), Jun-ichiro itojun Hagino wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: telnet 0: No address associated with hostname 
>
> 	this is because we switched name resolution code in telnet(1) from
> 	inet_aton(3) to getaddrinfo(3).  getaddrinfo(3) is specified to take
> 	full dot-quad only.  do we need to provide backward compatibility
> 	for this?  if so, we need to perform:
> 		inet_aton -> inet_ntop -> getaddrinfo

I wouldn't mind if backward compatibility wre re-introduced, but it's
not a strict requirement.  I often took advantage of inet_aton()'s
ability to accept a normal integer (eg. "telnet 3428646402 25") in order
to figure out what the addresses some spammers mention are, and to
simultaneously connect to their mail/web/whatever servers to see what
they announced themselves as.  At the moment I can still use host(1)
(even the new v991529) to do this in a slightly more round about way
though:

# host -a 3428646402
Name: most.weird.com
Address: 204.92.254.2
Aliases: mail.weird.com

If it's not "fixed" though it's extremely important that the
documentation for telnet be changed to reflect the use of getaddrinfo()!

     open host [-l user] [-a] [[-]port]
                Open a connection to the named host.  If no port number is
                specified, telnet will attempt to contact a TELNET server at
                the default port.  The host specification may be either a host
                name (see hosts(5)) or an Internet address specified in the
                ``dot notation'' (see inet(3)).  The -l option may be used to
                specify the user name to be passed to the remote system via
                the ENVIRON option.  When connecting to a non-standard port,
    . . .

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098      VE3TCP      <gwoods@acm.org>      <robohack!woods>
Planix, Inc. <woods@planix.com>; Secrets of the Weird <woods@weird.com>