On Mon, 28 Dec 2009, Neil Williams <codeh...@debian.org> wrote: > Various tools need 'hostname -f' to operate, so there will need to be > more in /etc/hosts than that - which is where things can get complex. A > hostname of some kind is going to be needed.
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=562780 I've filed a bug against Dovecot regarding this issue. There should be very few tools that rely on "hostname -f" working - or returning useful data if it does work. In the modern Internet where services such as EC2 are increasing in popularity in the vast majority of cases the purpose of a hostname is only for tracking errors. It's used in syslog and displayed to the users in some situations (such as Perdition connection messages and email headers) so that users can make useful problem reports. In those cases the FQDN is of no use, a client who reads their mail in the example.com domain and wants to report a problem doesn't need to know that it's server10.example.com that had a problem, the server being described as merely "server10" should be adequate. One annoying aspect of this is that /etc/hosts can't be the same on all systems. It means that I need to make my distribution process involve adding an extra customised line after pushing a change of /etc/hosts to all servers. While this isn't THAT painful, it's something that can get messed up on occasion. -- russ...@coker.com.au http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Main Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
