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Bug#893394: debian-edu-install: FQDN wrongly ends up in /etc/hostname on tjener



Hi Petter,

On Sun, Mar 18, 2018 at 07:17:06PM +0100, Petter Reinholdtsen wrote:
> [Dominik George]
> > However, on Debian systems, only the short hostname must be in
> > /etc/hostname
> 
> Why do you believe this to be true?  The /etc/hostname in Skolelinux /
> Debian Edu is intentionally FQDN.  Personally, based on many years of
> large scale *nix system administration, I believe it is the only
> sensible thing to store there.
> 
> In short, it is no mistake the FQDN is stored there.

I think that depends on how you define "mistake".

Reading hostname(1):

FILES
       /etc/hostname  Historically this file was supposed to only
       contain the hostname and not the full canonical FQDN. Nowadays
       most software is able to cope with a full FQDN here. This file is
       read at boot time by the system initialization scripts to set the
       hostname.

       /etc/hosts Usually, this is where one sets the domain name by
       aliasing the host name to the FQDN.


I know this is not what most Unix admins expect because Debian diverts
from the standard here, or used to. However, as the manual says, "most
software is able to cope with a full FQDN here". My point of view is
that we should rather stay in line with the Debian installer, and "most
software" is not "all software". I have recently at least seen one
backup tool fail because of this (although I agree it shouldn't break).

So, my opinion is: If there is no good reason in Debian Edu (as in,
software breaking, not beliefs), we should strip the domain part there
like Debian itself normally does.

-nik

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