Date: Wed, 17 Jan 2001 15:24:45 -0500 (EST) From: Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.ORG> To: mouss <usebsd@free.fr> Cc: Archie Cobbs <archie@dellroad.org>, Warner Losh <imp@harmony.village.org>, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Setting default hostname to localhost Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.3.96L.1010117152229.70729B-100000@fledge.watson.org> In-Reply-To: <4.3.0.20010117202543.04e28280@pop.free.fr>
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On Wed, 17 Jan 2001, mouss wrote: > At 21:16 16/01/01 -0500, Robert Watson wrote: > >The nice thing about "localhost" is that it already appears in > >/etc/hosts, and is a relatively reserved name, so unlikely to conflict too > >much based on resolution order. I.e., amnesiac.res.cmu.edu is not an > >unlikely name. > > sure, but I consider that the "hostname" variable has nothing to do with > resolution. > you can call your host amnesiac and still "ping localhost" thanks to > /etc/localhost. > > in other words, callin it "amnesiac" has nothing to do with "amnesiac.foo.bar". On the contrary, there are many applications that expect the results of a gethostname() to resolve, and point to the local machine. It's arguable that these applications are broken, but there are enough of them to raise consideration. They include lpd, sdr, and cvsup. Consider that currently you can't run the printer spooler if you don't have a hostname that resolves to an IP; you can't use sdr without a resolvable hostname, and you can't use the cvsup graphical interface without a resolvable hostname. I'd like to see these fixed of course--DHCP doesn't always provide a hostname, but it's a continuing problem. Robert N M Watson FreeBSD Core Team, TrustedBSD Project robert@fledge.watson.org NAI Labs, Safeport Network Services To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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