From owner-freebsd-hackers Mon May 5 13:20:32 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id NAA16897 for hackers-outgoing; Mon, 5 May 1997 13:20:32 -0700 (PDT) Received: from sax.sax.de (sax.sax.de [193.175.26.33]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id NAA16892 for ; Mon, 5 May 1997 13:20:26 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from uucp@localhost) by sax.sax.de (8.6.12/8.6.12-s1) with UUCP id WAA14101; Mon, 5 May 1997 22:20:20 +0200 Received: (from j@localhost) by uriah.heep.sax.de (8.8.5/8.8.5) id WAA09038; Mon, 5 May 1997 22:11:50 +0200 (MET DST) Message-ID: <19970505221150.DH03755@uriah.heep.sax.de> Date: Mon, 5 May 1997 22:11:50 +0200 From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch) To: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Cc: marko@ki.informatik.uni-frankfurt.de (Marko Schuetz) Subject: Re: bind before hosts and iijppp... References: <199705051353.GAA25141@hub.freebsd.org> X-Mailer: Mutt 0.60_p2-3,5,8-9 Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Phone: +49-351-2012 669 X-PGP-Fingerprint: DC 47 E6 E4 FF A6 E9 8F 93 21 E0 7D F9 12 D6 4E Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de (Joerg Wunsch) In-Reply-To: <199705051353.GAA25141@hub.freebsd.org>; from Marko Schuetz on May 5, 1997 15:47:58 +0200 Sender: owner-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk As Marko Schuetz wrote: > Maybe a better policy would be to have as few as possible entries in > /etc/hosts, but have /etc/host.conf default to hosts before bind. bind before hosts is the default policy (also if there's no host.conf at all). This has a long tradition, and it's basically ``The Right Thing'', since it just means the opinion of the network administrator (who administers the DNS) has more weight than that of the local system's administrator (who maintains /etc/hosts) when it comes to network maintenance. If you're not going to use DNS, well, you're at a loss and should revert the entries. Sysinstall should offer setting up a local caching DNS server anyway, this can be done within 10 seconds, at the cost of a few hundred KB of RAM. If you're PPP connected, it's wise to also mirror the forward and reverse zones of your own domain. Btw., use IP numbers (and not hostnames) in PPP and system setup files to avoid chicken-and-egg problems. -- cheers, J"org joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)