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From: Jonathan McKeown <j.mckeown@ru.ac.za>
Organization: Rhodes University
To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2012 11:04:24 +0200
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Cc: "Alexander V. Chernikov" <melifaro@freebsd.org>, net@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: ifconfig accepting hostname as ipv4 address
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On Friday 08 June 2012 09:43:25 Alexander V. Chernikov wrote:
> On 08.06.2012 11:20, Jonathan McKeown wrote:
> > On Thursday 07 June 2012 17:00:04 Alexander V. Chernikov wrote:
> >> Hello list!
> >>
> >> Since the early days ifconfig(8) has the following functionality:
> >
> > [hostname in place of literal address]
> >
> >> Moreover, ifconfig em0 some_valid_fqdn/MASK silently ignores it, so you
> >> can't set valid CIDR address using this notation.
> >
> > I'm not sure that's true. Have you tried it? Because it seems to work
> > here.
>
> Strangely enough, it works on another machine. Ok, this one works and
> can unfortunately be used by other people.
>
> However, original question remains.

So your question is, do we want to keep the behaviour of being able to 
configure an interface by hostname as well as by IP address?

My vote is yes. Sure, a typo in the parameters to ifconfig can cause problems 
under some circumstances. So can a typo in any command. I don't think that's 
a good enough reason to remove functionality you regard as ``unfortunate''. 
We find it useful, and a significant aid to maintainability and readability 
of configuration files.