From owner-freebsd-questions Fri Dec 22 14:30:13 2000 From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Dec 22 14:30:11 2000 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from bcfw1d.bridge.com (bcfw1d.ext.bridge.com [167.76.159.31]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 02DF137B402 for ; Fri, 22 Dec 2000 14:30:06 -0800 (PST) Received: (from uucp@localhost) by bcfw1d.bridge.com (8.10.2/8.10.2) id eBMMV3U21303 for ; Fri, 22 Dec 2000 16:31:03 -0600 (CST) Received: from unknown(167.76.56.34) by bcfw1d.bridge.com via smap (V5.5) id xma021272; Fri, 22 Dec 00 16:30:54 -0600 Received: from mnmailhost (mnmailhost.bridge.com [167.76.155.14]) by mail1srv.bridge.com (8.8.8/8.7.3) with SMTP id QAA16539 for ; Fri, 22 Dec 2000 16:29:50 -0600 (CST) Received: from 89-7 by mnmailhost (SMI-8.6/SMI-4.1) id RAA10954; Fri, 22 Dec 2000 17:29:44 -0500 To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: /etc/hosts "official host name" References: <8zp835yf.fsf@tim.bridge.com> From: Tim Ayers Date: 22 Dec 2000 16:29:44 -0600 In-Reply-To: Tim Ayers's message of "22 Dec 2000 08:07:20 -0600" Message-ID: Lines: 43 User-Agent: Gnus/5.0803 (Gnus v5.8.3) Emacs/20.5 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG I apologize for not explaining myself in my first attempt at this question. (The "/etc/hosts and including domains" thread.) Thanks to the people that answered back. Now I'll try again. I understand what /etc/hosts is for. I want to know why in the /etc/hosts file, my machine is listed as "janis.quaday.com" instead of just "janis". And why it has two different entries. The original /etc/hosts file after a new install of FreeBSD-4.1.1 contains 127.0.0.1 localhost 192.168.196.3 joan.quaday.com joan 192.168.196.3 joan.quaday.com. Re-reading hosts(5) shows For each host a single line should be present with the following information: Internet address official host name aliases This is the only place where the name part of the specifier is mentioned. I can believe "official host name" implies FQDN, since that should be unique across the Internet and therefore arguably official, but if anyone can expand on that, I'd appreciate it. I also wonder why my /etc/hosts has a line like 192.168.196.3 janis.quaday.com. I know 'named' likes to see that trailing "." so it knows that it has a complete name, but then why is the name without the "." included? And according to the hosts(5), "for each host a single line should be present," but there are two lines for one host, which makes me even more confused. Everything works, so this isn't important. I'm just curious. Thanks again and Hope you have a very nice day, :-) Tim Ayers (tayers@bridge.com) To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message