On Fri, 2005-10-07 at 16:26 +0200, Christoph Haas wrote: > The problem is probably that the "localhost.localdomain" stands before > "localhost" in that line. So if you "reverse resolve" 127.0.0.1 you > end up with "localhost.localdomain" which some applications don't understand.
Christopher hits the nail on the head. There are two separate issues: 1 - Is there a reason to have localhost.localdomain 2 - If there is localhost.localdomain should *not* precede localhost! I'm not going to comment on the former but the latter is a *BIG* deal. The current Debian /etc/hosts file is flat out wrong. When a call to gethostbyname(3) or gethostbyaddr(3) and an IPV4 address of 127.0.0.1 is supplied, it should return "localhost". Provided resolv.conf is configured to use files and then dns, gethostbyname/gethostbyaddr is going to query /etc/hosts. In /etc/hosts multiple hostnames can be assigned to a single address, but when resolving an address to a hostname, the *first* hostname in the list is returned by gethostbyname/gethostbyaddr. Every sane implementation of IP returns "localhost" when querying 127.0.0.1. It doesn't matter if the implementation uses /etc/hosts, /etc/inet/hosts, /boot/beos/etc/hosts, or (*gulp*) c: \winnt\system32\drivers\etc\hosts. Of course, other systems ship with a default hosts file containing something in addition to "localhost" that resolves to 127.0.0.1. The issue with Debian is that "localhost.localdomain" comes *before* "localhost". A call to gethostbyname() to resolve localhost returns a struct referring to 127.0.0.1. A call to gethostbyname() to resolve 127.0.01 returns a struct referring to localhost.localdomain. This is *wrong*. This has been mentioned before, but I'll say it again. This is solely because the Debian /etc/hosts reads: 127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost "localhost.localdomain" and "localhost" must be swapped. The first entry in the list of hosts *must* be "localhost". Just as a sanity check, Solaris ships with: 127.0.0.1 localhost loghost FreeBSD ships with: 127.0.0.1 localhost localhost.my.domain myname.my.domain I don't have access to AIX, HPUX or other major Unices, but I bet in the hosts file, 127.0.0.1 is immediately followed by localhost -- and other aliases follow localhost. "localhost" *must* be first. -Jeff -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
