I have recently installed a full version of Slackware 11.  I have also 
recently gone over to broadband.  My browsers and mail setups all work fine, 
but I have noticed two (almost certainly related) problems.  One is that, on 
invoking "dnsdomainname" or the "hostname" equivalent, nothing is printed, 
although the command returns success.  The second problem is that both 
the "sendmail" daemon and the queue runner take at least a minute each to 
come up.  Neither of these problems existed before my switch to broadband. 

If I invoke "dnsdomainname -f" I get just "localhost".  I should add that I 
have a two-computer  LAN routed via the modem, but implemented with a 
software "eth0:1" alias.  If I do a "who",  after connecting to the other 
machine  via "rsh" or "telnet",  however, I do get the full host and domain 
name printed out.  I should also add that, once it is up and 
running, "sendmail" (which I only use internally) works fine, but gives the 
hostname as "localhost", whereas my shells all give the host part of the 
machine name, as does the "hostname" command without flags.

My guess is that something is not right in the "/etc/hosts" file.  My ISP 
(internode), did direct me to a "comp.mail/sendmail" group where slow 
start-up (but also slow mail delivery) were discussed.  I tried a fix given 
there (by one Kostas), which basically involved giving the loopback IP 
a "localhost.localdomain" and the machine name, but to no avail.

At present, my "/etc/hosts" file has entries for the loopback (with the 
machine name behind it) and entries for my two machines (i.e. IP address, 
fully qualified hostname, and then just  machine name as nickname behind).  
My "/etc/resolv.conf" (which is probably not relevant), has nothing on 
the "search" line and the modem's IP as nameserver).

Neither of these problems seem to result in any real disfunctionality, but 
something is not right.  Any suggestions?

Malcolm Johnston

PS: "sendmail -d" only gives a few lines of info and then stops; there is no 
info of no relevance and does not print out anything about domains, nodename, 
or the like.  Various option levels seem to make no difference, so I can't 
access its view of what is going on.
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