Re: localhost in /etc/hosts
On 2006-11-21 15:49:07 +0100, Matus UHLAR - fantomas wrote:
> I was talking about problem with 'hostname', not problem with 'hosts'.
Sorry, this wasn't clear.
> Why do you still talk about 'hosts'?
Well, the result of the hostname command depends on the /etc/hosts
file and if your configuration is incorrect, it may not give you a
consistent result.
Also, I'd say that the "hostname" man page is sometimes ambiguous
("host name" may have several meanings, e.g. FQDN or the result of
the gethostname(2) function, but IMHO, it is a good idea to make
sure that they are the same).
> One of possible problems was having "localhost" in hosts.allow or similar
> files, which didn't match when 127.0.0.1 mapped to something else.
Indeed your hosts.allow probably wasn't complete. In addition to
localhost, you should have added the hostname. Or perhaps the IP
address 127.0.0.1.
> there often is no FQDN, as there is often no IP.
The machine should always have a FQDN, though it may be resolved
locally only (in particular if your machine is not on a network).
Otherwise you'll have problems with software that requests it (I
don't think there's another portable way to fully identify the
machine).
--
Vincent Lefèvre <vincent@vinc17.org> - Web: <http://www.vinc17.org/>
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Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / Arenaire project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)
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