From owner-freebsd-hackers Sun Sep 14 23:14:47 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id XAA03494 for hackers-outgoing; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 23:14:47 -0700 (PDT) Received: from brickbat9.mindspring.com (brickbat9.mindspring.com [207.69.200.12]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id XAA03482 for ; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 23:14:43 -0700 (PDT) Received: from bogus.mindspring.com (user-37kbo5i.dialup.mindspring.com [207.69.224.178]) by brickbat9.mindspring.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id CAA14903; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 02:14:32 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <1.5.4.32.19970915061326.00fa6c4c@mail.mindspring.com> X-Sender: kpneal@mail.mindspring.com X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Light Version 1.5.4 (32) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 02:13:26 -0400 To: Greg Lehey From: "Kevin P. Neal" Subject: Re: Why not DNS (was: nfs startup - perhaps it is a problem) Cc: FreeBSD Hackers Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk At 02:07 PM 9/15/97 +0930, Greg Lehey wrote: >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. Why? It's overkill. >> You don't want to set up a nameserver. > >No fair. We're talking about technical reasons here, not emotional ones. It's not an emotional argument, it's a logistical argument. I have a test in my Physics class at 7pm tomorrow (Monday). I have class during the day. I need to be asking questions all day to help me be ready for my test. I have a programming assignment due Wednesday in my CSC 451 class (OS) that I'm expecting to have to spend 8-12 hours on. I have another program due in my data structures class due a week from Wednesday. I have to go to work as well. Plus I have more homework due and more on the way. My X terminal broke yesterday and I need to fix it (a Sun 3/60 dual-headed). Next week won't be much better. You wanna set up a nameserver for me? I can arrange a time for my box to be on the air, my hostname is kpneal.users.mindspring.com (when I'm up). >> 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. How else am I going to tell my machine what name servers to use? >> 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? So does sup, rdist, rcp in a cron job, etc etc etc. Those are also easier to set up. Plus, how often does my network change that radically? Once in 4 years. Plus, of my machines, only three are up all the time. One is my Windows box, one is an unix box, the third is my X terminal. Actually, four: my Amiga finally works again so it will be doing stuff as well. How difficult is it to syncronize /etc/hosts across that many machines? > It caches >name server lookups across your slow Internet connection? Check my headers. I do most of my stuff on the Internet via my 486 running (yah, I know) Windows 95. It has it's own (internal) modem. Do you know how difficult it is to get Windows to switch name servers? What a pain! I also dialup via my other box and run sup, fetchmail (on an alternate email account), etc. It has an /etc/hosts file for the apartment, and nameservers at Mindspring for the Internet. Dude, we're looking at even more complexity when what I have works fine. I don't have time for adding complexity to my system when it works just fine now. >named is your friend. It may be your friend, but it's way overkill for what I do. -- XCOMM Kevin P. Neal, Junior, Comp. Sci. - House of Retrocomputing XCOMM mailto:kpneal@pobox.com - http://www.pobox.com/~kpn/ XCOMM kpneal@eos.ncsu.edu Spoken by Keir Finlow-Bates: XCOMM "Good grief, I've just noticed I've typed in a rant. Sorry chaps!"