$SOCKS_NS

[Rob Mayoff]

| I installed Red Hat 6.0 on my 770X and when I start X Window I get a error
| that states that the local host name in unknown, do I want to continue. I
| click yes, and X starts, Netscape works OK, (I connect to the internet using
| a LAN-T1 connection) but when Netscape starts I get a Netscape error that
| states that the $SOCKS_NS variable is not set. It does not give me any info
| about that variable. Can someone tell me where that is so I can set it.

Are you behind a firewall?  Here's what I found about SOCKS_NS at
<http://help.netscape.com/kb/client/961207-1.html>:

Topic:

When trying to connect to a site I recieve the following error message:

     Warning: the following hosts are unknown:
     
                home.netscape.com
                internic.net
     
     This means that some or all hosts will be unreachable.

Discussion:

In general, there may be a problem with your name server. If your site
must use a non-root name server, you will need to set the $SOCKS_NS
environment variable to point at the appropriate name server. It may
(or may not) be necessary to set this variable, or the SOCKS host
preference, to the IP address of the host in question rather than its
name.

However, this error message can be misleading since the etc/resolv.conf
may have the appropriate entry, and the only time you need to set a
SOCKS entry is under manual proxy server configurations. This most
likely will not work, nor will setting the variable as the above
suggests.

In these cases, the problem is that a base install of Solaris 2.5
doesn't default host lookup to DNS and it's probably trying to parse it
via NIS (Network Information Service) which was originally intended to
replace DNS for LANs that don't provide Internet conectivity. It will
let you pull up host names on the LAN but nowhere else. You'll also be
able to bring up a page by its IP address but that's useless.

To fix this:

Edit the /etc/nsswitch.conf file. The default line for hosts reads:

  hosts: files

Change it to:

  hosts: files dns

Next you may need to 'kill -1 XXXX' where XXXX is the process ID (PID)
for inetd (the Internet daemon), which can be found by typing:

  ps -ef

As root and then restarting it (if it doesn't launch again on its own).
You may also simply restart your system for the change to take effect.

In most cases you will want to consult your system administrator.