From xemacs-m  Fri Apr 11 08:29:47 1997
Received: from frege.math.ethz.ch (frege-d-math-north-g-west.math.ethz.ch [129.132.145.3])
	by xemacs.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id IAA07762
	for <xemacs-beta@xemacs.org>; Fri, 11 Apr 1997 08:29:43 -0500 (CDT)
From: vroonhof@math.ethz.ch
Received: from riesz.math.ethz.ch (vroonhof@riesz [129.132.145.81]) by frege.math.ethz.ch (8.6.12/Main-STAT-mailer) with ESMTP id PAA14874; Fri, 11 Apr 1997 15:28:07 +0200
Received: (vroonhof@localhost) by riesz.math.ethz.ch (8.6.12/D-MATH-client) id PAA26370; Fri, 11 Apr 1997 15:27:12 +0200
Message-Id: <199704111327.PAA26370@riesz.math.ethz.ch>
Subject: Re: gnuserv
To: mharnois@sbt.net (Michael Harnois)
Date: Fri, 11 Apr 1997 15:27:11 +0200 (MET DST)
Cc: xemacs-beta@xemacs.org
In-Reply-To: <87208kqmo7.fsf@sbt.net> from "Michael Harnois" at Apr 9, 97 09:45:56 am
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24 PGP2]
Content-Type: text

> Well, I believe you when you say you are not the maintainer of gnuserv 
> ... but I have a problem with it. It doesn't work for me. :) And Steve 
> says he doesn't understand it well enough to help me, so I hope
> perhaps you can give me a clue.

I think I have in this case.

> the minibuffer: "Server subprocess exited."

It would be nice if Emacs reported the error message from gnuserv in
those cases.

> So I tried executing
> gnuserv from a shell, just to see if it would give me a clue, and I
> get the message: ./gnuserv: unable to find mharnois in /etc/hosts or
> from YP.

That messages is printed by gnuserv and it just means that it wasn't
able to lookup the hostname. It probably should be saying just that
and not guessing about /etc/hosts and stuff. Most probably it didn't
look in /etc/hosts

> Well, mharnois *is* in /etc/hosts. I don't run YP, but I suppose I
> could learn how if that's the only way I can make this work ...

Anyway, you have _the_ typical SunOS problem: Host name resolving.
Because of the awfull default implementation by sun everybody is
using his own resolver libraries, patched libc's etc, that creates a
mess when you use binary kits.

I cannot remember whether you were using your own kit or the
precompiled binaries. My guess now is that the version of gnuserv you
are using is compiled with a non-Sun resolver libary.
If I can remember well  the most popular resolver library by default
only looks into DNS not in /etc/hosts. You will have to create a
config file. [Logs in to SunOS system at old university, ah the
wonders of internet]

Try

/etc/host.conf

with a line

order hosts,bind

Jan



