resolver broken on feisty? (was Re: sshd complains: POSSIBLE BREAK-IN ATTEMPT)

[Josef Wolf]

On Sun, Sep 16, 2007 at 09:10:20PM +1000, Karl Auer wrote:

Thanks for your efforts, Karl!

> What do you have in /etc/nsswitch.conf on these two machines?

[ ... ]
hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
[ ... ]

Ah, it seems that here we come closer to the problem.  When I reduce this
line to "hosts: files" the problem diasappears.

With the original line, I see 2 problems:

1. "[NOTFOUND=return]" appears before "dns".  This means that dns lookups
   will never be done?  Does this really make sense?

2. I have googled a little bit for mdns information.  It looks as if the
   domain name ".wolf.local" that I have choosen for my internal network
   (should not be visible from outside) collides with mdns.

   Now I wonder what domain names can be used for such purposes.  Is
   there something like "private" domain names (analogous to the rfc1918
   private addresses like 192.168.x.y?)