Help needed w/4.0.1 named & mail

[The Ancient Programmer]

I have just been made(stuck with) system manager of a Sun 3/280 server and
its clients, and have 0 experience in that area.  My first task was to
build 4.0.1 (Ha!)  I have a number of problems, and am getting no help
from the Sun "Hot?-line".

After some thrashing around, 4.0.1 appeared to build properly, and most
things appear to work.  However:

1. "Named" does not work.  "Nslookup" will return the Internet address of
the site asked for, but ftp and telnet will not reach any host that is not
in our YP data base.

The files named.boot, named.cache, named.cache.initial, named.local, and
in.named are all present, and rc.local starts in.named. But, no network
communication.

[[ That's right.  You have to build the hosts databases with the "-b"
option on makedbm.  The best way to do this is to change the Makefile in
/var/yp.  Then ypserv will consult named if it doesn't find a match in the
database.  HOWEVER:  the bug that existed in the old "ypserv -i" code
STILL EXISTS (I just discovered this yesterday).  After you have built the
hosts.by* databases with "-b", then any time someone asks for a host that
has a nameserver entry without an "A" record (a good example is a host
that only has an "MX" record), then ypserv will go nuts and start
subprocesses with reckless abandon (I estimated 15 every second).
Supposedly there is a fix for this.  I have not yet tried it.  So use this
with caution, because if your hosts database is inaccessible then a whole
lotta things become near impossible (such as "rlogin").  --wnl ]]

2.  Using /usr/ucb/mail, one user can not read his mail when logged onto
the server. He can delete & save, but he cannot 't' or 'l' his mail.  He
gets, "csh: permission denied". However, other users in his gid can read
their mail. In addition, none of the users can edit their mail via 'e'.
When they try they get "/tmp/Rz1234 [Read only] ...". Root can 'e' his
mail.  Obviously a permission problem somewhere but /tmp has permissions &
owner of:

	drwxrwsrwx  2 bin    512 etc

Does anyone have anyone have any ideas which might help me out?

Please email any suggestions to me since I will be unable to read the NEWS
for the next few weeks.  Thanks.

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