Network strangeness

[Chris G]

On Wed, Apr 30, 2008 at 08:55:32AM -0500, Aaron Konstam wrote:
> I have two machines on a home network:
> cyrus - wireless
> saturn - wired
> 
> On cyrus : ping saturn and host saturn both fail saying saturn can't be
> found. However, ssh saturn works.
> 
> On saturn: ping cyrus works but host cyrus fails.
> ssh cyrus, works 
> 
> I don't use iptables. Any explanations for this behavior?
> 
> Errors are like: 
> ** server can't find saturn: NXDOMAIN
> 
> I suspect that some things use the local /etc/host bu others do not.

Certainly the 'host' command doesn't use /etc/hosts so that suggests:-

    cyrus can't find saturn using DNS but saturn is in its /etc/hosts
    file so ssh works.

    saturn can find cyrus using DNS, it may well be able to find it
    using /etc/hosts as well.

I wonder if you have things set up so ping (ICMP packets?) are refused
somewhere in the system so that ping will never work regardless of
DNS, routing, etc.

-- 
Chris Green