Subject: No DNS resolving with PC Pine

From: [email-masked] (Alex Nishri)
Date: Tue, 12 Jul 1994 19:28:47 GMT

We are using PC Pine 3.89 and Novell's LWP 4.12 TCP/IP stack.  We are able to
get it to work except for one problem.  In the PINERC file if we specify a
hostname for the inbox-path={hostname.utcc.utoronto.ca}inbox it doesn't work;
instead we have to specify the IP address of our IMAP server,
inbox-path=(hostip}inbox.

We noted that in the INSTALL.TXT file it tells us to set the DOS variable
EXCELAN=C:\NET  (Unfortunately this choice of DOS variable name is not
very illuminating.  It took a bit of head scratching before someone realized
that Excelan was the name of a company that Novell bought out many moons
ago.)  However, when we set EXCELAN things still didn't work.

Finally, on a lark we put the hostname in C:\NET\HOST.  When the EXCELAN DOS
variable is now set, things finally work.  So, I assume that the undocumented
purpose of the EXCELAN variable is to let PC Pine find C:\NET\TCP\HOSTS so it
can fish around in there instead of using the domain name resolver.
Unfortunately, in a University with 70,000 people we don't want hostnames to
be propagated in /etc/hosts files all over--we must use Domain Name Servers.

Does anyone know how to make PC Pine 3.89 use the Novell LWP domain name
resolver rather than a hosts file?

Alex Nishri
Network Services
University of Toronto
[email-masked]

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From: [email-masked] (Michael S. Robinson)
Date: 13 Jul 1994 14:02:51 GMT

Sorry to say, but I had absolutely no problem.  I simply 
modified the pinerc file to point to my server, set the
EXCELAN variable to C:\NET, which is the root directory
for my LWP 4.1 installation.  I have NO hosts file, but a 
simply configured resolv.cfg which does name resolution.

No problems whatsoever

Mike

--
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
Mike Robinson                     [email-masked]
At one point in my life I had a clear sense of direction and 
a great future to look forward to.  College changed all that.