I saw this DNS entry:

 10.7.18.64.in-addr.arpa. 22018  IN      PTR     *.s8a1.psmtp.com.

Which resolves with dig and host and nslookup, for example:

 $ host 64.18.7.10
 10.7.18.64.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer *.s8a1.psmtp.com.


But gethostbyaddr(3) fails for that and h_errno is "3" which is:

#define NO_RECOVERY     3 /* Non recoverable errors, FORMERR, REFUSED, NOTIMP */

Or:

 NO_RECOVERY     Some unexpected server failure was encountered. This is
                 a non-recoverable error.
 
And hstrerror(h_errno) has "Unknown server error".

ktrace shows:

 19145      1 gethost  CALL  recvfrom(3,0x805b000,0x10000,0,0xbfbfdd70,0xbfbfde3c)
 19145      1 gethost  GIO   fd 3 read 71 bytes
       "\M^[\M-Y\M^A\M^@\0\^A\0\^A\0\0\0\0\^B10\^A7\^B18\^B64\ain-addr\^Darpa\
        \0\0\f\0\^A\M-@\f\0\f\0\^A\0\0@\M-:\0\^R\^A*\^Ds8a1\^Epsmtp\^Ccom\0"


This is NetBSD 3.99.24.

I am trying to look through /usr/src/lib/libc/net/gethnamaddr.c to see why 
this is happening. Any clues?

But has anyone else seen this type of PTR value? Is it okay? Is 
gethostbyaddr(3) broken? (Or maybe I am using it wrong.)


By the way, I was testing this with my pkgsrc/net/gethost tool.


  Jeremy C. Reed