From owner-freebsd-hackers Wed May 7 00:00:10 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id AAA06327 for hackers-outgoing; Wed, 7 May 1997 00:00:10 -0700 (PDT) Received: from awfulhak.demon.co.uk (awfulhak.demon.co.uk [158.152.17.1]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id AAA06289 for ; Wed, 7 May 1997 00:00:01 -0700 (PDT) Received: from awfulhak.demon.co.uk (localhost.lan.awfulhak.org [127.0.0.1]) by awfulhak.demon.co.uk (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id HAA07655; Wed, 7 May 1997 07:59:53 +0100 (BST) Message-Id: <199705070659.HAA07655@awfulhak.demon.co.uk> X-Mailer: exmh version 1.6.9 8/22/96 To: "Kevin P. Neal" cc: Mikael Karpberg , freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: bind before hosts and iijppp... In-reply-to: Your message of "Tue, 06 May 1997 19:58:49 EDT." <1.5.4.32.19970506235849.00925a40@mindspring.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Wed, 07 May 1997 07:59:53 +0100 From: Brian Somers Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > At 08:58 AM 5/6/97 +0200, Mikael Karpberg wrote: > >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. > > It also seems kinda stupid to have to hit the wire to resolve "localhost" > to it's ip. This is a bit trickier. You can have the reverse: primary 0.0.127.IN-ADDR.ARPA localhost.rev where localhost.rev is the one generated by make-localhost, but we need to have make-localhost generate the zone file too. This then conflicts with any local DNS config files - bearing in mind that you need to have a zone file for "localhost.my.domain" rather than just localhost. Here, you begin to need to know what you're doing ! Not so easy to give examples. > -- > 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!" >