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From: Mikael Karpberg <karpen@ocean.campus.luth.se>
Message-Id: <199705060658.IAA24805@ocean.campus.luth.se>
Subject: Re: bind before hosts and iijppp...
To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de
Date: Tue, 6 May 1997 08:58:44 +0200 (MET DST)
Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
In-Reply-To: <19970505221150.DH03755@uriah.heep.sax.de> from J Wunsch at "May 5, 97 10:11:50 pm"
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According to J Wunsch:
> 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.

DNS can be slow/down/unreachable.  /etc/hosts is never. I think that's a win.
There should only be a few entries in etc hosts, anyway. And if anything is
wrong in that file, the admin is at fault.

> 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.

Yeah! That would be a great entry in post install menu somewhere.

  /Mikael