Hello,
I would like to reach out to the Debian and broader open-source community regarding a recurring and impactful issue that affects cloud environments globally.
My name is Loic C. I worked as a Product Support Engineer in the UK for seven years, assisting clients with cloud configuration, and I continue to reside in the UK.
The issue is that /etc/hosts files are frequently incorrectly formatted on cloud servers. This often leads to communication failures between systems, resulting in reliability issues, performance degradation, and
unnecessary troubleshooting overhead.
I propose that a standard be developed across major operating systems, including Debian, to validate
/etc/hosts formatting and raise explicit errors when the structure is incorrect. This is important because:
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The
/etc/hosts file is evaluated before DNS, so formatting errors can fully break name resolution.
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Differences between Linux distributions (e.g. Debian vs Red Hat) and other OS families increase the risk of misconfiguration.
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Faulty configuration causes resource waste and increased energy consumption in cloud environments, which has sustainability implications.
I have also contacted IEEE, Red Hat, and other OS communities to encourage a coordinated effort. To address this effectively, I believe a cross-industry working group or standards alignment discussion would be beneficial.
This represents a relatively small improvement with meaningful benefits for operational reliability, energy efficiency, and sustainability in modern cloud computing.
Thank you for your time and consideration. I would welcome feedback, collaboration, and direction on the appropriate next steps.
Best regards,
Loic C.