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	Mon, 15 Sep 1997 14:07:22 +0930 (CST)
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Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 14:07:22 +0930
From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>
To: "Kevin P. Neal" <kpneal@pobox.com>
Cc: FreeBSD Hackers <hackers@freebsd.org>
Subject: Re: Why not DNS (was: nfs startup - perhaps it is a problem)
References: <1.5.4.32.19970915043359.00faa990@mail.mindspring.com>
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On Mon, Sep 15, 1997 at 12:33:59AM -0400, Kevin P. Neal wrote:
> At 11:42 AM 9/15/97 +0930, Greg Lehey wrote:
>> I haven't been following this thread too closely, but I still claim
>> that /etc/hosts is just plain obsolete.  If anybody can give me any
>> reasons for using /etc/hosts, I'm sure I can refute them.
>
> How about:
>
> You are running a very small network (less than 10 machines) and are
> sometimes connected to the Internet.

No.  An ideal reason to want to have a name server.

> You don't want to set up a nameserver.

No fair.  We're talking about technical reasons here, not emotional ones.

> You _do_ want these machines to have
> names. You don't have names for them on the Internet. Furthermore, you don't
> want to have to diddle /etc/resolve.conf apon ppp-up and ppp-down to point
> at a different name server.

If you have a name server, you don't need resolv.conf.

> You know exactly what "lookup file bind" does, and it does exactly
> what you want in this situation.

It keeps your host names consistent across the local net?  It caches
name server lookups across your slow Internet connection?

named is your friend.

Greg