StarQuest Technical Documents

"Unable to contact host" Error Using Host-Client Access for UNIX

Last Update: September 10, 1998
Product: StarQuest Client Access for UNIX
Operating System: All, most commonly SCO
Article ID: SQV00CA011

Abstract

The license management software implemented in Client Access for UNIX communicates over TCP/IP. A common licensing error which occurs reads 'Unable to contact host'. This occurs due to incorrect or incomplete entries in the /etc/hosts file.

Solution

The /etc/hosts file contains tcp/ip information for hosts on the network. Many new installations of any UNIX operating system contain incorrect entries in the /etc/hosts file. The format of this file should be as follows:

    IPaddress Name FullyQualifiedDomainName

Many times, the entries will be duplicated:

100.100.200.2 myhost
100.100.200.2 myhost.mydomain.com
100.100.200.3 yourhost.yourdomain.com

Or, the entry may be incorrect:

100.100.200.2 myhost yourhost.yourdomain.com

This causes a conflict when tcp/ip tries to resolve a name. Make sure that the entries are correct, and not duplicated. The resulting file entries should look like this:

100.100.200.2 myhost myhost.mydomain.com
100.100.200.3 yourhost yourhost.yourdomain.com

Once this is complete, retry Client Access for Unix OS. You should now be able to get a license, resulting in correct behavior of the application.

 

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