Re: localhost.localdomain

[Gabor Gombas <gombasg@sztaki.hu>]

On Thu, Oct 06, 2005 at 07:31:37AM -0500, Steve Greenland wrote:

> When proposing a variation from long-standing historical practice,
> shouldn't the onus be on the on making the change? What problem does
> 'localhost.localdomain' solve? Why is is better than just 'localhost',
> which has been common practice for oh, what, 20+ years?

It's being long-standing does not mean it's correct. I started looking
for any standards or RFCs that require that the address 127.0.0.1 should
resolve to "localhost" but I could only find some recommendations for
DNS administrators, and _nothing_ about /etc/hosts. Therefore I'd be
inclined to say that if an application does not accept 127.0.0.1 being
resolved to e.g. "foo" then it is is broken, and this is not changed by
the fact that it has been broken for 20+ years.

There are other long-standing misunderstanding in network setup (just
think about the stupidity of "hostname --fqdn"). Let's fix the bugs in
the applications instead of religiously following bad assumptions made
in the past.

Gabor

-- 
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     MTA SZTAKI Computer and Automation Research Institute
                Hungarian Academy of Sciences
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