socket.gethostbyaddr() wrongly returning a DNS CNAME as the 'primary' hostname

Thu Apr 28 16:18:13 EDT 2011

Thanks for the reply, Ned.
Bummer for me. Check this out:
C code on Solaris 10 SPARC returns the following with nscd
running (the Solaris Naming Services Caching Daemon, on by
default):
 PRIMARY according to gethostbyaddr(): my-dns-cname.our.org
 ALIAS according to gethostbyaddr(): primary.our.org
 However, I can stop/start nscd and get the complete opposite
 (correct) result.
C code on Solaris 10 SPARC returns the following with nscd
OFF:
 PRIMARY according to gethostbyaddr(): my-dns-cname.our.org
 ALIAS according to gethostbyaddr(): primary.our.org
 These then ALTERNATE consistently with every successive
 invocation of my code.
C code on Linux 2.6 with glibc 2.5 returns:
 PRIMARY according to gethostbyaddr(): primary.our.org
 [ no aliases get listed ]
Time to query the corporate DNS folks.