>I agree. Usually, UNIX people tend to come up with unnecessarily complex
>solutions for simple newbie needs.

cat /dev/null > X
for i in 1 2
do
    echo "X" >> X
done


cat /dev/null > Y
for i in 1 2
do
    echo "Y" >> Y
done

cat X Y > Z
echo "2 + 2 = `wc Z | cut -d1`"

[argh!  apologies for the bugs... I don't have a shell handy...]

>>>whole reason I want to set up a DNS is that I want it to be able to
>>>tell ANY computer a name for itself or other computers.
>>>Everytime I ask you just put up a wall and say 'don't go
>>>there'.Well my friend managed it in Linux so I can do it too. So
>>>tell me - is there any info on it around or am I just going to go
>>>on asking until I go blue?
>
>>Get a copy of BOG.  Buy the OReilly book.  Read the man pages.
>>What else do you want?  A yellow book titled "BIND for Dummies"?
>>:>
>
>Go here, this guide deals with most matters which a NetBSD newbie will
>encounter, including setting up "named".

But, I think part of the problem is defining just what a newbie is
*likely* to need.  I don't see BIND as one of those "newbie issues"...

>>I ran things here with hosts(5) for a long time just to *avoid*
>>dealing with DNS.  But, now have too many hosts to manually
>>maintain that database.
>
>Same here, but it turned out that some TCP/IP implementations didn't
support
>the hosts file, and copying it around the network turned out to be chore.

scp is your friend.

>OTOH, if all you want is a network distributed hosts file, DNS is quite
>complicated. I'd be very happy if someone invented a DNS server which would
>just take your hosts file and shut up.

Well, you *can* configure DNS to simply serve up a static hosts(5)
style database.  This might be a worthwhile thing to build...
a script that just builds forward and reverse maps for named
using hosts(5) for those folks that want that sort of thing.

But, DNS quickly can get more complicated once dealing with
the outside world and trying not to screw things up...

>>>If it's any motivation the very existence of my LCIII depends on
>>>this....
>
>>I just tossed out a few LC II's because I couldn't find anything
>>*small* enough for them to do... :-/  Even serving X proved to
>>be too costly!  And I don't think they keep good enough time
>>to act as NTP servers...  (though I think the LC III -- or maybe
>>the III+? -- has a 32 bit data path which would help...)
>
>The LCIII is the same as the Performa 450, with a 030/25 and 32-bit memory.
So
>it's not really an LC at all, only crippled due to its size, without any
>deliberate construction errors.

So, it just shares a case (?) design with the LC?  Does it have
similarly constrained physical memory limitations??

(sigh)  I'll have to keep my eyes open for one.  I was planning
on grabbing some PPC Macs or NeXT boxes in my next "acquisition"
but perhaps should flesh out my 68K's first...


--don