In message <Pine.LNX.4.58.0409191608040.7763@sheflug.sheflug.net>, Richard Ibbo
tson writes:
>Hi
>
>I've gotten used to NetBSD 1.6.2 over the past few months.  Looking 
>forward to the 2.0 release when the IPF bugs are sorted out :)
>
>Just installed 1.6.2 into a laptop and found that the PCMCIA card was 
>found and started to work right away.  The output of ifconfig -a shows 
>that the card is working and configured as 192.168.1.12 with netmask 
>255.255.255.0.  I can ping all other machines on the internal network.  
>The gateway is seen by the laptop as 192.168.1.1.  When I ping an 
>external address the net connection goes up and an external address is 
>found.  
>
>However, when I do something like ...
>
>'cd /usr/pkgsrc/mail/postfix' and 'make'
>
>a pile of error messages fall down the screen which say..
>
>"ftp: No address associated with hostname
>ftp:  Can't connect or login to host 'ftp.fi.NetBSD.org'  "
>
>it keeps on going at this for a long string of hosts and then gives up.  
><shrug> .  I also notice that the net connection doesn't go up when I 
>try and install a package. 
>
>Tried various things but can't work why it is that packets are not 
>transmitted across the internal net to the gateway box when I try to 
>install a package.
>
>Can anyone suggest what I'm doing wrong here ?  I should be able to work 
>it out but after a couple of hours of trying nothing is working.

It sounds like your DNS isn't configured properly.  How is the machine 
gettings its IP address?  What does /etc/resolv.conf say?  Do the dig 
or host commands work?

		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.research.att.com/~smb