OpenSSH and hostname resolution issues on Solaris

Is it a feature or a configuration error with OpenSSH when sshd refuses to answer, if you have DNS configured via /etc/resolv.conf and /etc/nsswitch.conf but the nameservers are not available (due to firewalling, for example)?

Worst case the machine never gets past starting sshd during boot, but usually you "just" can't reach the machine with ssh. The OpenSSH in question is anything from ~2.9 to 3.5p1, compiled with tcp_wrappers and sshd: ALL in hosts.allow (if that matters). OS is Solaris 8, but I think we've had it in Sol7 as well.

Some answers that turn up when browsing list archives seem to discuss misconfigured reverse-dns combined with all: PARANOID in hosts.deny but we haven't used the paranoid stuff. Sometimes the DNS is just out of reach and that's when things start going wrong.

Is there some simple solution to the problem we haven't noticed? Received on Sat Nov 9 01:03:23 2002