Re: cfagent delays on startup

[Sven Mueller]

Sven Mueller wrote on 05/01/2005 14:24:
> I have the following setup (in a non-routable network):
>
> machine A: cfengine master, no DNS, all hosts that might connect
>             are listed in /etc/hosts, /etc/resolv.conf doesn't exist.
> machine B: cfengine client, DNS-Server for some zones, no access to
>             any other DNS servers, all hosts it needs to know are listed
>             in /etc/hosts, no /etc/resolv.conf exists.

Problem was that cfagent on machine B was slow when the local DNS-Server 
was running (master DNS - on non-routable Net - for our public DNS 
servers) and as fast as it should be when the local DNS server was not 
running. Other than that, there was no difference on machine B between 
the runs.

Thanks to tim Nelson, I found out what was going wrong:
/etc/nsswitch.conf had the following lines:
hosts:       files dns
networks:    files dns

Well, since the local DNS didn't actually resolve anything apart from 
some zones, the "dns" in those lines was wrong. It caused cfagent to 
timeout on some queries (which ones I don't know), probably while 
setting up the automatic groups. Removing the "dns" from the lines 
mentioned above made cfagent ignore the local DNS server (as I expected 
it to do anyway, since no nameserver was listed in /etc/resolv.conf) and 
always run as fast as on any other machine no matter wether the local 
DNS server was running or not.

regards,
sven