Re: where is /etc/hosts supposed to come from?

[Osamu Aoki <osamu@debian.org>]

Hi,

On Fri, Jan 01, 2010 at 10:29:51AM +1100, Brian May wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 31, 2009 at 04:33:44PM +0000, Philipp Kern wrote:
> > Using .local in own environments sadly clashes with the (I think now
> > installed by default) mDNS namespace for locally-resolvable hostnames.
> > But it somehow makes sense for a laptop; it would even resolve.  ;-)
> 
> Yes, that is what I was getting at too. It is also a problem for Mac OS X
> boxes, at least without fiddling.

I was naively thinking if hostname part being unique, it does not clash.
Am I incorrect?

> This can be a problem even if you don't intend to use zeroconf/mdns on your
> network. Typically what happens is DNS queries time out without resolving
> and packet traces show that there are no requests happening.

I see this.  But this is general problem whatever bogus domain name is
used including ones like .invalid or .pri.
 
> I don't know of any good choice for a TLD that is guaranteed not to be used on
> the Internet, although currently I am using .pri (short for .private) here.

I see your point.  It is less likely to crash since very few people have
chosen .pri than .local.  But this doesn not seem to be something as a
widely accepted gneral practice as you described.

> Even .local is only mentioned in a experimental RFC that had expired (at least
> last I checked which was a while ago now).
> 
> In case any is confused of the relationship between mdns and zeroconf:
...
>  of the GNU C Library (glibc) providing host name resolution via Multicast
>  DNS (using Zeroconf, aka Apple Bonjour / Apple Rendezvous ), effectively
>  allowing name resolution by common Unix/Linux programs in the ad-hoc mDNS
>  domain .local.

I thought FQDN under such environment is <hostname>.local .  (Chosing
overlapping <hostname> itself on a single LAN is not good idea and very
rare.)

It seems these is no agreed practice to minimize negative impact.  But
there are many good-enough solutions used widely by picking bogus domain
like .pri .lan .??? 

Osamu