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Unknown host

When starting a session (e.g. rexec, rsh, ssh, StarNetSSH, or Xdmcp) in X-Win32 you may receive the error below in X-Win32’s Messages window (which can be accessed by selecting Show Messages from the tray or system menus):

  • Unknown Host

    This error means that the host name specified in the session is either invalid or the DNS (Domain Name System) lookup for this host name is failing for some reason. Some trouble shooting steps are below:

    1. Try to ping the host name from a command prompt in Windows (e.g. “ping foo.example.com”)
      1. If the ping returns an IP address, then the host name is likely working okay
      1. If the ping returns a message such as the following, then the host name is likely incorrect or DNS is not configured correctly: Ping request could not find host foo.example.com. Please check the name and try again.
    2. If the host name fails to resolve and recent changes have been made to the DNS configuration to fix the problem, then you may need to purge the DNS cache in Windows by running “ipconfig /flushdns” from a command prompt
    3. Work with your systems administrator to fix the DNS problem
  1. If you know the IP address of the host, modify your session in X-Config to specify the IP address instead of the host name (this will work well as long as your IP addresses do not change frequently

    Category:Errors
    Cateogry:Sessions