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Ethereal-dev: Re: [Ethereal-dev] libnsl, libsocket

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From: "Dr. Uwe Girlich" <Uwe.Girlich@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 08:37:04 +0200
Hello!

On Thu, May 03, 2001 at 12:57:03PM -0700, Guy Harris wrote:
> > The libnsl,libsocket-dependency is a real nightmare. On many SysVR4 systems,
> > libsocket.so needs libnsl.so but the symbol gethostbyname() is in libsocket.so
> > and not in libnsl.so where we check for it in acinclude.m4.
> Which SVR4 systems are those?  It's in "-lnsl" in SunOS 5.6, which, I
> suspect, probably means it's in "-lnsl" in the original AT&T SVR4
> releases.
All SVR4 systems made by Siemens or Nixdorf (now known as Fujitsu-Siemens-
Computers). These are (among others too obscure to be widely used any more):
SINIX-M 5.41
SINIX-Z
SINIX-N 5.43, 5.44
ReliantUNIX-Y 5.43 5.44
ReliantUNIX-N/Y 5.45

I just checked the source files (its good to have those handy) in
/usr/src/lib/libnsl/* which came around 1991 as RCS release 1.1 directly from
AT&T to Siemens. There is no trace of gethostbyname() in libnsl. Also my
idea with gethostname was a bad one. gethostname is only used in 
/usr/src/lib/libnsl/rpc/gethostname.c to get more BSD conformance in the
code (SVR4 programs uname()).

> The current code was stolen from autoconf's AC_PATH_XTRA macro; if
> there's a problem with it in our configure script, there's also a
> problem with it in autoconf.
That may well be. With almost all GNU programs I have to use
LIBS=-lnsl ./configure
to get a linkable version.

Bye, Uwe