Previous: Local (Unix) Domain Sockets, Up: Networking
Presently name service is implemented by calling whatever
gethostbyname(2)
uses. This may be any or all of
/etc/hosts, NIS, DNS, or something completely different.
Typically it's controlled by /etc/nsswitch.conf.
Direct links to the asynchronous resolver(3)
routines would be
nice to have eventually, so that we can do DNS lookups in parallel
with other things
Returns a
host-ent
instance forhost-name
or throws some kind of condition.host-name
may also be anip
address in dotted quad notation or some other weird stuff-
see gethostbyname(3) for grisly details.