Subject: pine vs. PC-Pine

From: Robert Larmon <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Jul 1999 15:52:13 -0700 (Pacific Daylight Time)

Hi all,
	I was wondering what the main differences are between a telnet
session and PC-Pine with regards to resolving hostnames.  The reason I ask
is that whenever our university's DNS servers go down or have a broadcast
storm or whatever, I can telnet in to my server and use regular Pine, but
I can't use PC-Pine. (error 10021 - can't get [hostname] , or something
like that - it's working now so I can't recreate the error)  Is PC-Pine or
imap more reliant on DNS than a telnet session?  If so, how does this
work?  Thanks for any info.  (My boss' boss wants to know :)

My system:

Win98
Pentium III/450
Netterm (our telnet program)
PC-Pine 4.10

My server:

SunOS 4.1.x (Solaris 1.x)
Pine 3.96
imap 3.x

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`			Robert Larmon				      `
`			PC Systems Analyst			      `
`			USC Law School Computing Services	      `
`			[email-masked]			      `
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From: Bobby Ezell <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Jul 1999 16:21:56 -0700 (PDT)

How are you attaching over telnet? If you are connecting by IP address
rather than name that will be the big difference. If the Pine on UNIX is
on your mail server, it does not need DNS (it may be using a local hosts
file or ....). Usually imap and pop services are dependent on a name such
as "mail" (I don't even know if you can set your PC-Pine to work with IP
addresses, and I don't know if your particular host daemons will work that
way, but you might try).

Bobby Ezell
Rasmussen Software, Inc.

> SunOS 4.1.x (Solaris 1.x)

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From: Scott Leibrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Jul 1999 18:42:21 -0700 (PDT)

Even if PC-Pine doesn't support IPs, you can make Windows resolve names on
its own.  What I do, for example, is put a line like:

140.142.x.x   something.u.washington.edu

in my c:\windows\hosts file.  (Of course, x's aren't valid in actual IP
addresses.)  That way you don't need a DNS to look up your mail servers.
Of course, this would be good only if your mail server's IP never changes.

And also, this would only help if your DNS server went down.  In your
case, that might not be happening, since you can still telnet out.

-- 
Scott Leibrand
[email-masked]
How to contact me:
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From: Robert Larmon <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Jul 1999 09:20:31 -0700 (Pacific Daylight Time)

We use hostnames for PC-Pine and Telnet.  It just seems odd that telnet
would work where PC-Pine wouldn't.  I wonder if this is an imap behavior.
(Well, as soon as we upgrade to imap 4 we may notice a difference)  Oh
well, it's a moot question if the university can keep their nose clean :)

Thanks,

Robert

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From: Robert Larmon <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Jul 1999 09:29:56 -0700 (Pacific Daylight Time)

I would not necessarily recommend using a hosts file on PCs, unless you
modify it often.  Some program installed a hosts file on my PC, unknown to
me, and my browser couldn't find certain sites after they updated the ip
address (especially Symantec and Sun education).  I didn't even know that
this was an option, but once I read MS's site for a few hours, I found a
note about using the file.  I deleted the file, and I could find the sites
again!

Anyways, I think DNS was working, but was overwhelmed with a broadcast
storm. (If that's the correct terminology)  Once you waited half an hour,
everything was fine, but this happened two or three times over the course
of two days.  Somehow telnet, using hostnames, was able to get through.
(maybe more quickly so it didn't time out?)

I just hope it never happens again.

Thanks for the tip,

Robert

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From: Scott Leibrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Jul 1999 15:45:30 -0700 (PDT)

What you say about hosts files is true.  Don't use them unless you're
aware of what they do (override your DNS server) and are prepared to
change them when a site changes its IP.  In my case, I only use if for a
host name (dante01.u.washington.edu) that I only use when I run into
network problems and can't use dante.u.washington.edu.  Since that doesn't
normally happen, my hosts file can't interfere with normal operation.

As for the difference between Telnet and PC-Pine, I don't have a clue.  :)