Steven Augart <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I could not agree more. I am not terribly pleased that there is now a
`now'? It's been in the sh-utils/coreutils for over 8 years. I agree in principle that these days coreutils `hostname' program is often not useful. But bear in mind that the vast majority of users don't have a problem because they use these tools via a distribution mechanism (.rpm, .deb) that arranges not to install programs like hostname that can cause trouble. > simple-minded "hostname" command in "coreutils"; after I installed 5.0.92 > (cvs head) in my Linux machine's /usr/local/bin, suddenly the machine > renamed itself to "--fqdn". Why? Because at least one program that > "root" runs calls "hostname --fqdn" to get the host's fully qualified > domain name. Be very careful about installing stock coreutils tools on your system. Many people experience problems with the fact that head, tail, uniq, etc. no longer accept options like `-1', `+2' when the tools are built in a conforming environment. There are still many scripts that use e.g. `head -1' and fail badly (or worse, subtly) when head fails. > Linux, at least, ships with a fine "hostname" in net-tools 1.60, and I'm > not clear on why the world needs a second one, but I wasn't part of the > bug-coreutils list at the time that decision was made. (I've just > searched the archives and can't find any discussion of such an issue.) > > There has been other correspondence discussing issues of this kind with > "hostname" at > http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-coreutils/2003-04/msg00038.html > (I like Peter Breitenlohner's suggestion that an option should be > available not to install some of the executables in coreutils, such as > "hostname" and "kill", which are already provided by other packages) and What's wrong with coreutils' kill? > http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-coreutils/2003-03/msg00091.html (Bob > Proulx's <rant>...</rant> at the end is particularly good). I'm open to the idea of not installing hostname. Does anyone use it? Would anyone miss it? _______________________________________________ Bug-coreutils mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-coreutils
