From owner-freebsd-hackers  Fri Jan 12 11:56:38 2001
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To: Archie Cobbs <archie@dellroad.org>
Subject: Re: Setting default hostname to localhost 
Cc: Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.ORG>, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
In-reply-to: Your message of "Fri, 12 Jan 2001 11:45:07 PST."
		<200101121945.LAA01072@curve.dellroad.org> 
References: <200101121945.LAA01072@curve.dellroad.org>  
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2001 12:56:14 -0700
From: Warner Losh <imp@harmony.village.org>
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In message <200101121945.LAA01072@curve.dellroad.org> Archie Cobbs writes:
: There is an RFC that specifies a "private use" top level domain,
: analogous to 192.168.0.0/16, 10.0.0.0/8, etc.
: 
: The domain is ".local" so any default ending in ".local" should
: not conflict.

RFC 2606 states:
   To safely satisfy these needs, four domain names are reserved as
   listed and described below.

                   .test
                .example
                .invalid
              .localhost

      ".test" is recommended for use in testing of current or new DNS
      related code.

      ".example" is recommended for use in documentation or as examples.

      ".invalid" is intended for use in online construction of domain
      names that are sure to be invalid and which it is obvious at a
      glance are invalid.

      The ".localhost" TLD has traditionally been statically defined in
      host DNS implementations as having an A record pointing to the
      loop back IP address and is reserved for such use.  Any other use
      would conflict with widely deployed code which assumes this use.

But RFC 2964 and 2965 (which relate to http things) both say
   The IESG notes that this mechanism makes use of the .local top-level
   domain (TLD) internally when handling host names that don't contain
   any dots, and that this mechanism might not work in the expected way
   should an actual .local TLD ever be registered.

So it looks like the more porper choice is 'host.invalid' rather than
'localhost'.  I think that would, in the end, cause fewer problems.

Warner


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