The Name Service Cache Daemon (nscd) Fails to Start when /etc/resolv.conf has a Bogus Timestamp. (Doc ID 1324678.1)

Symptoms

Nscd is restarting very quickly and eventually is placed in maintenance mode.
A 'svcs -xv' session is showing the following:
...
svc:/system/name-service-cache:default (name service cache)
State: maintenance since Mon Apr 18 09:07:48 2011
Reason: Restarting too quickly.
  See: http://sun.com/msg/SMF-8000-L5
  See: man -M /usr/share/man -s 1M nscd
  See: /var/svc/log/system-name-service-cache:default.log
Impact: This service is not running.
...
The corresponding /var/svc/log/system-name-service-cache:default.log log file contains:
...
[ Apr 18 09:07:48 Method "start" exited with status 0 ]
[ Apr 18 09:07:48 Stopping because service restarting. ]
[ Apr 18 09:07:48 Executing stop method (:kill) ]
[ Apr 18 09:07:48 Restarting too quickly, changing state to maintenance ]
...

Changes

At every naming service request the Name Service Cache Daemon (nscd) is checking if /etc/resolv.conf and /etc/nsswitch.conf have been changed.

This is done by comparing the time stamp of the file via the stat(2) system call with the previous time stamp of the file.

If the time stamps of one of these files has changed, the nscd will restart itself.

Cause

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