I was not here when Baan was installed, but I heard that Baan uses AIX's /etc/hosts file when making a connection - so every baan_user must be listed in this /etc/hosts file. Does that sound accurate?

Anyone even out there on a Sunday? :-)

Thanks;
Theresa

Hi Theresa,

I think there must be a mis-understanding. /etc/hosts is used as a means of hostname resolving. ie. which IP addresses are linked to which descriptive hostnames:

e.g.

127.0.0.1 localhost
90.0.0.1 server1
90.0.0.2 server2

Other means to resolve hostnames are e.g. DNS and NIS.

I cannot see what Baan users have to do with this? :confused:

PS: my whole weekend was down the drain due to a UX and Oracle upgrade :o

Yes, that is what I thought...but I'd thought I had better check with all you Baan experts before drawing any conclusions.

Sorry you didn't get to enjoy this beautiful weekend...if it makes you feel any better, I didnt' get to either. :o

Thanks again.

Hi Theresa,

As absurd as what it sounds, due to a problem specific to AIX and Baan, you need to have every client on an AIX system listed in /etc/hosts. This is due to the reverse address lookup that is made when the IP ARP activity occurs at the start of the connection setup.

Since AIX does this lookup as part of the rexecd services, and some earlier versions of AIX did not allow you to disable this feature of AIX, you had to list every client in /etc/hosts. (Sorry I just realized I am being redundant here).

Add the -c option to the rexecd line in the inetd.conf file. The -c prevents reverse name resolution. When the -c flag is not specified, the rexecd daemon will fail if the reverse name resolution of the client fails (i.e. not in the hosts file or DNS server). After changing the /etc/inetd.conf file, run the refresh -s inetd or kill -1 InetdPID command to inform the inetd daemon of the changes to its configuration file.

For more details, you can see the below link:

http://www.rs6000.ibm.com/idd500/usr/share/man/info/en_US/a_doc_lib/cmds/aixcmds4/rexecd.htm

I (or my customers) have been bit by this one many times, especially when moving to a new version of AIX or nw system, since no one remembers about this service.

Sorry -- I had a great weekend and was out enjoying it with my family so I didn't check the board until today :)

Hope this helps,

-- Jim

Thanks so much for the reply and clarification...I will check out the line you enclosed also.

Theresa

Hi Jim,

Thanks for the info, didn't realize AIX had a problem with disabling reverse hostname lookups. Sorry Theresa, seems your collegues were right after all. Maybe you should consider using DNS/NIS instead of a huge /etc/hosts file.

Just a clarification. If you are using the -c rexecd flag, you do not need to use the /etc/hosts file for every client.

I would always use the -c flag and then use DNS for all significant hosts but not worry about the desktop systems.

-- Jim

Hi to all BaaN-on-AIX users,

Q: Does everyone use the "-c" flag as it was suggested by Jim?
Till today I've just entered every new BaaN-BW client into /etc/hosts. But it is grooooooooowing...
I've looked for some solution and found that one. It's OK (thanks a lot, Jim!!!), but how it affects on other connections (servers, net components)?!?

This is the related line from my /etc/inetd.conf file
exec stream tcp6 nowait root /usr/sbin/rexecd rexecd -c

you just need to add the -c flag at the end and refresh inetd daemon like JamesV said.

Caner